Inverse Problems Of Mathematical Physics

No detailed description available for "Inverse Problems of Mathematical Physics".

This monograph deals with the theory of inverse problems of mathematical physics and applications of such problems. Besides it considers applications and numerical methods of solving the problems under study. Descriptions of particular numerical experiments are also included.

This volume consists of papers presented in the special sessions on "Wave Phenomena and Related Topics", and "Asymptotics and Homogenization" of the ISAAC'97 Congress held at the University of Delaware, during June 2-7, 1997. The ISAAC Congress coincided with a U.S.-Japan Seminar also held at the University of Delaware. The latter was supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant INT -9603029 and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science through Grant MTCS-134. It was natural that the 'participants of both meetings should interact and consequently several persons attending the Congress also presented papers in the Seminar. The success of the ISAAC Congress and the U.S.-Japan Seminar has led to the ISAAC'99 Congress being held in Fukuoka, Japan during August 1999. Many of the same participants will return to this Seminar. Indeed, it appears that the spirit of the U.S.-Japan Seminar will be continued every second year as part of the ISAAC Congresses. We decided to include with the papers presented in the ISAAC Congress and the U.S.-Japan Seminar several very good papers by colleagues from the former Soviet Union. These participants in the ISAAC Congress attended at their own expense. This volume has the title Direct and Inverse Problems of Mathematical Physics which consists of the papers on scattering theory, coefficient identification, uniqueness and existence theorems, boundary controllability, wave propagation in stratified media, viscous flows, nonlinear acoustics, Sobolev spaces, singularity theory, pseudo differential operators, and semigroup theory.

Developing an approach to the question of existence, uniqueness and stability of solutions, this work presents a systematic elaboration of the theory of inverse problems for all principal types of partial differential equations. It covers up-to-date methods of linear and nonlinear analysis, the theory of differential equations in Banach spaces, app

The normal business of physicists may be schematically thought of as predic ting the motions of particles on the basis of known forces, or the propagation of radiation on the basis of a known constitution of matter. The inverse problem is to conclude what the forces or constitutions are on the basis of the observed motion. A large part of our sensory contact with the world around us depends on an intuitive solution of such an inverse problem: We infer the shape, size, and surface texture of external objects from their scattering and absorption of light as detected by our eyes. When we use scattering experiments to learn the size or shape of particles, or the forces they exert upon each other, the nature of the problem is similar, if more refined. The kinematics, the equations of motion, are usually assumed to be known. It is the forces that are sought, and how they vary from point to point. As with so many other physical ideas, the first one we know of to have touched upon the kind of inverse problem discussed in this book was Lord Rayleigh (1877). In the course of describing the vibrations of strings of variable density he briefly discusses the possibility of inferring the density distribution from the frequencies of vibration. This passage may be regarded as a precursor of the mathematical study of the inverse spectral problem some seventy years later.