English

Determination of source terms in diffusion and wave equations by observations after incidents: uniqueness and stability

Analysis of PDEs 2025-07-11 v1

Abstract

We consider a diffusion and a wave equations: tku(x,t)=Δu(x,t)+μ(t)f(x),xΩ,t>0,k=1,2 \partial_t^ku(x,t) = \Delta u(x,t) + \mu(t)f(x), \quad x\in \Omega, \, t>0, \quad k=1,2 with the zero initial and boundary conditions, where ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d is a bounded domain. We establish uniqueness and/or stability results for inverse problems of 1. determining μ(t)\mu(t), 0<t<T0<t<T with given f(x)f(x); 2. determining f(x)f(x), xΩx\in \Omega with given μ(t)\mu(t) \end{itemize} by data of uu: u(x0,)u(x_0,\cdot) with fixed point x0Ωx_0\in \Omega or Neumann data on subboundary over time interval. In our inverse problems, data are taken over time interval T1<t<T1T_1<t<T_1, by assuming that T<T1<T2T<T_1<T_2 and μ(t)=0\mu(t)=0 for tTt\ge T, which means that the source stops to be active after the time TT and the observations are started only after TT. This assumption is practical by such a posteriori data after incidents, although inverse problems had been well studied in the case of T=0T=0. We establish the non-uniqueness, the uniqueness and conditional stability for a diffusion and a wave equations. The proofs are based on eigenfunction expansions of the solutions u(x,t)u(x,t), and we rely on various knowledge of the generalized Weierstrass theorem on polynomial approximation, almost periodic functions, Carleman estimate, non-harmonic Fourier series.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.08157,
  title  = {Determination of source terms in diffusion and wave equations by observations after incidents: uniqueness and stability},
  author = {Jin Cheng and Shuai Lu and Masahiro Yamamoto},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.08157},
  year   = {2025}
}