A geometric criterion for the dimension of Morgan-Scott spline spaces $S_{2r}^r(\Delta_{\mathrm{MS}})$

arXiv:2610.21192v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We establish a geometric dimension criterion for spline spaces on nondegenerate standard Morgan-Scott triangulations with four distinct edge directions at each interior vertex. For every integer $r\ge1$, concurrence of the three auxiliary lines joining corresponding interior and boundary vertices implies that $\dim S_{2r}^r(\Delta_{\mathrm{MS}})$ exceeds the Schumaker lower bound by one. The proof constructs a quadratic form through the six dual spoke points and uses its $r$th power to define a nonzero functional annihilating the image of the smoothing-cofactor map. Diener's upper bound then gives the dimension formula. We also give a matrix representation of this functional and an explicit example in the quadratic case. Combined with the known necessary conditions and the negative-branch exclusion of Deng, Feng, and Kozak, the result yields a necessary and sufficient concurrence criterion for $r>2$.