Efficient Numerical Reconstruction of Wave Equation Sources via Droplet-Induced Asymptotics
Abstract
In this paper, we develop and numerically implement a novel approach for solving the inverse source problem of the acoustic wave equation in three dimensions. By injecting a small high-contrast droplet into the medium, we exploit the resulting wave field perturbation measured at a single external point over time. The method enables stable source reconstructions where conventional approaches fail due to ill-posedness, with potential applications in medical imaging and non-destructive testing. Key contributions include: 1. Implementation of a theoretically justified asymptotic expansion, from [33], using the eigensystem of the Newtonian operator, with error analysis for the spectral truncation. 2. Novel numerical schemes for solving the time-domain Lippmann-Schwinger equation and reconstructing the source via Riesz basis expansions and mollification-based numerical differentiations. 3. Reconstruction requiring only single-point measurements, overcoming traditional spatial data limitations. 4. 3D numerical experiments demonstrating accurate source recovery under noise (SNR of the order ), with error analysis for the droplet size (of the order ) and the number of spectral modes .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.15787,
title = {Efficient Numerical Reconstruction of Wave Equation Sources via Droplet-Induced Asymptotics},
author = {Shutong Hou and Mourad Sini and Haibing Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.15787},
year = {2026}
}