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Conditionally Positive Functions and p-norm Distance Matrices

In Micchelli's paper "Interpolation of scattered data: distance matrices and conditionally positive functions", deep results were obtained concerning the invertibility of matrices arising from radial basis function interpolation. In particular, the Euclidean distance matrix was shown to be invertible for distinct data. In this paper, we investigate the invertibility of distance matrices generated by $p$-norms. In particular, we show that, for any $p\in (1, 2)$, and for distinct points $ x^1, ..., x^n \in {\cal R}^d $, where $n$ and $d$ may be any positive integers, with the proviso that $ n \ge 2$, the matrix $A \in {\cal R}^{n \times n} $ defined by $$ A_{ij} = \Vert x^i - x^j \Vert_p , \hbox{ for } 1 \le i, j \le n, $$ satisfies $$ (-1)^{n-1}\det A > 0 .$$ We also show how to construct, for every $p > 2$, a configuration of distinct points in some ${\cal R}^d$ giving a singular $p$-norm distance matrix. Thus radial basis function interpolation using $p$-norms is uniquely determined by any distinct data for $p \in (1,2]$, but not so for $p > 2$.