  We pose and solve the analogue of Slepian's time-frequency concentration
problem on the surface of the unit sphere to determine an orthogonal family of
strictly bandlimited functions that are optimally concentrated within a closed
region of the sphere, or, alternatively, of strictly spacelimited functions
that are optimally concentrated within the spherical harmonic domain. Such a
basis of simultaneously spatially and spectrally concentrated functions should
be a useful data analysis and representation tool in a variety of geophysical
and planetary applications, as well as in medical imaging, computer science,
cosmology and numerical analysis. The spherical Slepian functions can be found
either by solving an algebraic eigenvalue problem in the spectral domain or by
solving a Fredholm integral equation in the spatial domain. The associated
eigenvalues are a measure of the spatiospectral concentration. When the
concentration region is an axisymmetric polar cap the spatiospectral projection
operator commutes with a Sturm-Liouville operator; this enables the
eigenfunctions to be computed extremely accurately and efficiently, even when
their area-bandwidth product, or Shannon number, is large. In the asymptotic
limit of a small concentration region and a large spherical harmonic bandwidth
the spherical concentration problem approaches its planar equivalent, which
exhibits self-similarity when the Shannon number is kept invariant.
