PDE Real Analysis Seminar

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Date, time & place Tuesday 10:30 - 11:30 056Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)

2008/06/04

16:00-18:15   Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
William Rundell (Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University) 16:00-17:00
Inverse Obstacle Recovery when the boundary condition is also unknown
[ Abstract ]
We consider the inverse problem of recovering the shape, location
and surface properties of an object where the surrounding medium
is both conductive and homogeneous. It is assumed that the physical situation is modeled by either harmonic functions or solutions of the Helmholtz equation and that the boundary condition on the obstacle is one of impedance type. We measure either Cauchy data, on an accessible part of the exterior boundary or the far field pattern resulting from a plane wave. Given sets of Cauchy data pairs we wish to recover both the shape and location of the unknown obstacle together with its impedance.
It turns out this adds considerable complexity to the analysis. We give a local injectivity result and use two different algorithms
to investigate numerical reconstructions. The setting is in two space dimensions, but indications of possible extensions (and difficulties) to three dimensions are provided. We also look at the case of a nonlinear impedance function.
David Colton (Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Delaware) 17:15-18:15
The Inverse Scattering Problem for an Isotropic Medium
[ Abstract ]
This talk is concerned with the inverse electromagnetic scattering problem for an isotropic inhomogeneous infinite cylinder. After formulating the direct scattering problem we proceed to the inverse scattering problem which is the main theme of this lecture. After discussing what is known about uniqueness for the inverse problem,we will proceed to the definition and properties of the far field operator. This leads to the study of a rather unusual spectral problem for partial differential equations called the interior transmission problem. We will state what is known about this problem including its role in determining lower bounds for the index of refraction from a knowledge of the far field pattern of the scattered wave, The talk is concluded by briefly considering the case of limited aperture data,in particular the use of the gap reciprocity method to determine the shape and location of buried objects. Numerical examples will be given as well as a number of open problems.