Spherical designs, discrepancy and numerical integration

A spherical design is a point configuration on the sphere, which yields exact equal-weight quadrature formulae for polynomials up to a given de- gree. Until now only very specific constructions for spherical designs are known. We establish connections to spherical cap discrepancy and show some general discrepancy bounds. Furthermore, we reformulate the problem of construct- ing designs as an optimization problem and develop an algorithm for finding 'practical designs'.