Convergence of subdivision schemes on Riemannian manifolds with nonpositive sectional curvature

This paper studies well-defindness and convergence of subdivision schemes which operate on Riemannian manifolds with nonpositive sectional curvature. These schemes are constructed from linear ones by replacing affine averages by the Riemannian center of mass. In contrast to previous work, we consider schemes without any sign restriction on the mask, and our results apply to all input data. We also analyse the H\"older continuity of the resulting limit curves. Our main result states that convergence is implied by contractivity of a derived scheme, resp. iterated derived scheme. In this way we establish that convergence of a linear subdivision scheme is almost equivalent to convergence of its nonlinear manifold counterpart.