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This paper addresses the inverse scattering problem in the domain Omega. The input data, measured outside Omega, involve the waves generated by the interaction of plane waves with various directions and unknown scatterers fully occluded inside Omega. The output of this problem is the spatially dielectric constant of these scatterers. Our approach to solving this problem consists of two primary stages. Initially, we eliminate the unknown dielectric constant from the governing equation, resulting in a system of partial differential equations. Subsequently, we develop the Carleman contraction mapping method to effectively tackle this system. It is noteworthy to highlight this method's robustness. It does not request a precise initial guess of the true solution, and its computational cost is not expensive. Some numerical examples are presented.

This paper aims to determine the initial conditions for quasi-linear hyperbolic equations that include nonlocal elements. We suggest a method where we approximate the solution of the hyperbolic equation by truncating its Fourier series in the time domain with a polynomial-exponential basis. This truncation effectively removes the time variable, transforming the problem into a system of quasi-linear elliptic equations. We refer to this technique as the "time dimensional reduction method." To numerically solve this system comprehensively without the need for an accurate initial estimate, we used the newly developed Carleman contraction principle. We show the efficiency of our method through various numerical examples. The time dimensional reduction method stands out not only for its precise solutions but also for its remarkable speed in computation.

We propose a globally convergent computational technique for the nonlinear inverse problem of reconstructing the zero-order coefficient in a parabolic equation using partial boundary data. This technique is called the "reduced dimensional method". Initially, we use the polynomial-exponential basis to approximate the inverse problem as a system of 1D nonlinear equations. We then employ a Picard iteration based on the quasi-reversibility method and a Carleman weight function. We will rigorously prove that the sequence derived from this iteration converges to the accurate solution for that 1D system without requesting a good initial guess of the true solution. The key tool for the proof is a Carleman estimate. We will also show some numerical examples.

This paper aims to reconstruct the initial condition of a hyperbolic equation with an unknown damping coefficient. Our approach involves approximating the hyperbolic equation's solution by its truncated Fourier expansion in the time domain and using a polynomial-exponential basis. This truncation process facilitates the elimination of the time variable, consequently, yielding a system of quasi-linear elliptic equations. To globally solve the system without needing an accurate initial guess, we employ the Carleman contraction principle. We provide several numerical examples to illustrate the efficacy of our method. The method not only delivers precise solutions but also showcases remarkable computational efficiency.

The objective of this article is to introduce a novel technique for computing numerical solutions to the nonlinear inverse heat conduction problem. This involves solving nonlinear parabolic equations with Cauchy data provided on one side $\Gamma$ of the boundary of the computational domain $\Omega$. The key step of our proposed method is the truncation of the Fourier series of the solution to the governing equation. The truncation technique enables us to derive a system of 1D ordinary differential equations. Then, we employ the well-known Runge-Kutta method to solve this system, which aids in addressing the nonlinearity and the lack of data on $\partial \Omega \setmunus \Gamma$. This new approach is called the dimensional reduction method. By converting the high-dimensional problem into a 1D problem, we achieve exceptional computational speed. Numerical results are provided to support the effectiveness of our approach.

Our objective is to calculate the derivatives of data corrupted by noise. This is a challenging task as even small amounts of noise can result in significant errors in the computation. This is mainly due to the randomness of the noise, which can result in high-frequency fluctuations. To overcome this challenge, we suggest an approach that involves approximating the data by eliminating high-frequency terms from the Fourier expansion of the given data with respect to the polynomial-exponential basis. This truncation method helps to regularize the issue, while the use of the polynomial-exponential basis ensures accuracy in the computation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through numerical examples in one and two dimensions.

The first globally convergent numerical method for a Coefficient Inverse Problem (CIP) for the Riemannian Radiative Transfer Equation (RRTE) is constructed. This is a version of the so-called \textquotedblleft convexification" method, which has been pursued by this research group for a number of years for some other CIPs for PDEs. Those PDEs are significantly different from the RRTE. The presence of the Carleman Weight Function (CWF) in the numerical scheme is the key element which insures the global convergence. Convergence analysis is presented along with the results of numerical experiments, which confirm the theory. RRTE governs the propagation of photons in the diffuse medium in the case when they propagate along geodesic lines between their collisions. Geodesic lines are generated by the spatially variable dielectric constant of the medium.

The aim of this paper is to solve an important inverse source problem which arises from the well-known inverse scattering problem. We propose to truncate the Fourier series of the solution to the governing equation with respect to a special basis of L2. By this, we obtain a system of linear elliptic equations. Solutions to this system are the Fourier coefficients of the solution to the governing equation. After computing these Fourier coefficients, we can directly find the desired source function. Numerical examples are presented.

An $\left( n+1\right) -$D coefficient inverse problem for the radiative stationary transport equation is considered for the first time. A globally convergent so-called convexification numerical \ method is developed and its convergence analysis is provided. The analysis is based on a Carleman estimate. In particular, convergence analysis implies a certain uniqueness theorem. Extensive numerical studies in the 2-D case are presented.

We propose a new globally convergent numerical method to solve Hamilton-Jacobi equations in $\mathbb{R}^d$, $d \geq 1$. This method is named as the Carleman convexification method. By Carleman convexification, we mean that we use a Carleman weight function to convexify the conventional least squares mismatch functional. We will prove a new version of the convexification theorem guaranteeing that the mismatch functional involving the Carleman weight function is strictly convex and, therefore, has a unique minimizer. Moreover, a consequence of our convexification theorem guarantees that the minimizer of the Carleman weighted mismatch functional is an approximation of the viscosity solution we want to compute. Some numerical results in 1D and 2D will be presented.

It is shown that the contraction mapping principle with the involvement of a Carleman Weight Function works for a Coefficient Inverse Problem for a 1D hyperbolic equation. Using a Carleman estimate, the global convergence of the corresponding numerical method is established. Numerical studies for both computationally simulated and experimentally collected data are presented. The experimental part is concerned with the problem of computing dielectric constants of explosive-like targets in the standoff mode using severely underdetermined data.

We propose a new iterative scheme to compute the numerical solution to an over-determined boundary value problem for a general quasilinear elliptic PDE. The main idea is to repeatedly solve its linearization by using the quasi-reversibility method with a suitable Carleman weight function. The presence of the Carleman weight function allows us to employ a Carleman estimate to prove the convergence of the sequence generated by the iterative scheme above to the desired solution. The convergence of the iteration is fast at an exponential rate without the need of an initial good guess. We apply this method to compute solutions to some general quasilinear elliptic equations and a large class of first-order Hamilton-Jacobi equations. Numerical results are presented.

The main aim of this paper is to solve an inverse source problem for a general nonlinear hyperbolic equation. Combining the quasi-reversibility method and a suitable Carleman weight function, we define a map of which fixed point is the solution to the inverse problem. To find this fixed point, we define a recursive sequence with an arbitrary initial term by the same manner as in the classical proof of the contraction principle. Applying a Carleman estimate, we show that the sequence above converges to the desired solution with the exponential rate. Therefore, our new method can be considered as an analog of the contraction principle. We rigorously study the stability of our method with respect to noise. Numerical examples are presented.

To compute the spatially distributed dielectric constant from the backscattering data, we study a coefficient inverse problem for a 1D hyperbolic equation. To solve the inverse problem, we establish a new version of Carleman estimate and then employ this estimate to construct a cost functional which is strictly convex on a convex bounded set with an arbitrary diameter in a Hilbert space. The strict convexity property is rigorously proved. This result is called the convexification theorem and is considered as the central analytical result of this paper. Minimizing this convex functional by the gradient descent method, we obtain the desired numerical solution to the coefficient inverse problems. We prove that the gradient descent method generates a sequence converging to the minimizer and we also establish a theorem confirming that the minimizer converges to the true solution as the noise in the measured data and the regularization parameter tend to zero. Unlike the methods that are based on optimization, our convexification method converges globally in the sense that it delivers a good approximation of the exact solution without requiring any initial guess. Results of numerical studies of both computationally simulated and experimental data are presented.

We propose a globally convergent numerical method, called the convexification, to numerically compute the viscosity solution to first-order Hamilton-Jacobi equations through the vanishing viscosity process where the viscosity parameter is a fixed small number. By convexification, we mean that we employ a suitable Carleman weight function to convexify the cost functional defined directly from the form of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation under consideration. The strict convexity of this functional is rigorously proved using a new Carleman estimate. We also prove that the unique minimizer of the this strictly convex functional can be reached by the gradient descent method. Moreover, we show that the minimizer well approximates the viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation as the noise contained in the boundary data tends to zero. Some interesting numerical illustrations are presented.

We study the global convergence of the gradient descent method of the minimization of strictly convex functionals on an open and bounded set of a Hilbert space. Such results are unknown for this type of sets, unlike the case of the entire Hilbert space. Then, we use our result to establish a general framework to numerically solve boundary value problems for quasi-linear partial differential equations (PDEs) with noisy Cauchy data. The procedure involves the use of Carleman weight functions to convexify a cost functional arising from the given boundary value problem and thus to ensure the convergence of the gradient descent method above. We prove the global convergence of the method as the noise tends to 0. The convergence rate is Lipschitz. Next, we apply this method to solve a highly nonlinear and severely ill-posed coefficient inverse problem, which is the so-called back scattering inverse problem. This problem has many real-world applications. Numerical examples are presented.

We propose a numerical method to solve an inverse source problem of computing the initial condition of hyperbolic equations from the measurements of Cauchy data. This problem arises in thermo- and photo- acoustic tomography in a bounded cavity, in which the reflection of the wave makes the widely-used approaches, such as the time reversal method, not applicable. In order to solve this inverse source problem, we approximate the solution to the hyperbolic equation by its Fourier series with respect to a special orthogonal basis of $L^2$. Then, we derive a coupled system of elliptic equations for the corresponding Fourier coefficients. We solve it by the quasi-reversibility method. The desired initial condition follows. We rigorously prove the convergence of the quasi-reversibility method as the noise level tends to 0. Some numerical examples are provided. In addition, we numerically prove that the use of the special basic above is significant.

This report extends our recent progress in tackling a challenging 3D inverse scattering problem governed by the Helmholtz equation. Our target application is to reconstruct dielectric constants, electric conductivities and shapes of front surfaces of objects buried very closely under the ground. These objects mimic explosives, like, e.g., antipersonnel land mines and improvised explosive devices. We solve a coefficient inverse problem with the backscattering data generated by a moving source at a fixed frequency. This scenario has been studied so far by our newly developed convexification method that consists in a new derivation of a boundary value problem for a coupled quasilinear elliptic system. However, in our previous work only the unknown dielectric constants of objects and shapes of their front surfaces were calculated. Unlike this, in the current work performance of our numerical convexification algorithm is verified for the case when the dielectric constants, the electric conductivities and those shapes of objects are unknown. By running several tests with experimentally collected backscattering data, we find that we can accurately image both the dielectric constants and shapes of targets of interests including a challenging case of targets with voids. The computed electrical conductivity serves for reliably distinguishing conductive and non-conductive objects. The global convergence of our numerical procedure is shortly revisited., Comment: Coefficient inverse problem, multiple point sources, experimental data, Carleman weight, global convergence, Fourier series. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2003.11513

Inverse scattering problems of the reconstructions of physical properties of a medium from boundary measurements are substantially challenging ones. This work aims to verify the performance on experimental data of a newly developed convexification method for a 3D coefficient inverse problem for the case of objects buried in a sandbox a fixed frequency and the point source moving along an interval of a straight line. Using a special Fourier basis, the method of this work strongly relies on a new derivation of a boundary value problem for a system of coupled quasilinear elliptic equations. This problem, in turn, is solved via the minimization of a Tikhonov-like functional weighted by a Carleman Weight Function. The global convergence of the numerical procedure is established analytically. The numerical verification is performed using experimental data, which are raw backscatter data of the electric field. These data were collected using a microwave scattering facility at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte., Comment: 35 pages, 22 figures, 2 tables

A version of the convexification numerical method for a Coefficient Inverse Problem for a 1D hyperbolic PDE is presented. The data for this problem are generated by a single measurement event. This method converges globally. The most important element of the construction is the presence of the Carleman Weight Function in a weighted Tikhonov-like functional. This functional is strictly convex on a certain bounded set in a Hilbert space, and the diameter of this set is an arbitrary positive number. The global convergence of the gradient projection method is established. Computational results demonstrate a good performance of the numerical method for noisy data., Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication by Inverse Problems and Imaging

We propose a new numerical method to solve the linearized problem of travel time tomography with incomplete data. Our method is based on the technique of the truncation of the Fourier series with respect to a special basis of L2. This way we derive a boundary value problem for a system of coupled partial diffeerential equations (PDEs) of the first order. This system is solved by the quasi-reversibility method. Hence, the spatially dependent Fourier coefficients of the solution to the linearized Eikonal equation are obtained. The convergence of this method is established. Numerical results for highly noisy data are presented.

We propose a new numerical method for the solution of the problem of the reconstruction of the initial condition of a quasilinear parabolic equation from the measurements of both Dirichlet and Neumann data on the boundary of a bounded domain. Although this problem is highly nonlinear, we do not require an initial guess of the true solution. The key in our method is the derivation of a boundary value problem for a system of coupled quasilinear elliptic equations whose solution is the vector function of the spatially dependent Fourier coefficients of the solution to the governing parabolic equation. We solve this problem by an iterative method. The global convergence of the system is rigorously established using a Carleman estimate. Numerical examples are presented.

A new numerical method to solve an inverse source problem for the radiative transfer equation involving the absorption and scattering terms, with incomplete data, is proposed. No restrictive assumption on those absorption and scattering coefficients is imposed. The original inverse source problem is reduced to boundary value problem for a system of coupled partial differential equations of the first order. The unknown source function is not a part of this system. Next, we write this system in the fully discrete form of finite differences. That discrete problem is solved via the quasi-reversibility method. We prove the existence and uniqueness of the regularized solution. Especially, we prove the convergence of regularized solutions to the exact one as the noise level in the data tends to zero via a new discrete Carleman estimate. Numerical simulations demonstrate good performance of this method even when the data is highly noisy., Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, to be published in SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics

We consider the problem of computing the initial condition for a general parabolic equation from the Cauchy lateral data. The stability of this problem is well-known to be logarithmic. In this paper, we introduce an approximate model, as a coupled linear system of elliptic partial differential equations. The solution to this model is the vector of Fourier coefficients of the solutions to the parabolic equation above. This approximate model is solved by the quasi-reversibility method. We will prove the convergence for the quasi-reversibility method as the measurement noise tends to 0. The convergent rate is Lipschitz. We present the implementation of our algorithm in details and verify our method by showing some numerical examples.

A new numerical method to solve an inverse source problem for the Helmholtz equation in inhomogenous media is proposed. This method reduces the original inverse problem to a boundary value problem for a coupled system of elliptic PDEs, in which the unknown source function is not involved. The Dirichlet boundary condition is given on the entire boundary of the domain of interest and the Neumann boundary condition is given on a part of this boundary. To solve this problem, the quasi-reversibility method is applied. Uniqueness and existence of the minimizer are proven. A new Carleman estimate is established. Next, the convergence of those minimizers to the exact solution is proven using that Carleman estimate. Results of numerical tests are presented.

A new numerical method for X-ray tomography for a specific case of incomplete Radon data is proposed. Potential applications are in checking out bulky luggage in airports. This method is based on the analysis of the transport PDE governing the X-ray tomography rather than on the conventional integral formulation. The quasi-reversibility method is applied. Convergence analysis is performed using a new Carleman estimate. Numerical results are presented and compared with the inversion of the Radon transform using the well-known filtered back projection algorithm. In addition, it is shown how to use our method to study the inversion of the attenuated X-ray transform for the same case of incomplete data.

We propose in this paper a globally numerical method to solve a phaseless coefficient inverse problem: how to reconstruct the spatially distributed refractive index of scatterers from the intensity (modulus square) of the full complex valued wave field at an array of light detectors located on a measurement board. The propagation of the wave field is governed by the 3D Helmholtz equation. Our method consists of two stages. On the first stage, we use asymptotic analysis to obtain an upper estimate for the modulus of the scattered wave field. This estimate allows us to approximately reconstruct the wave field at the measurement board using an inversion formula. This reduces the phaseless inverse scattering problem to the phased one. At the second stage, we apply a recently developed globally convergent numerical method to reconstruct the desired refractive index from the total wave obtained at the first stage. Unlike the optimization approach, the two-stage method described above is global in the sense that it does not require a good initial guess of the true solution. We test our numerical method on both computationally simulated and experimental data. Although experimental data are noisy, our method produces quite accurate numerical results.

This paper is concerned with a numerical method for a 3D coefficient inverse problem with phaseless scattering data. These are multi-frequency data generated by a single direction of the incident plane wave. Our numerical procedure consists of two stages. The first stage aims to reconstruct the (approximate) scattered field at the plane of measurements from its intensity. We present an algorithm for the reconstruction process and prove a uniqueness result of this reconstruction. After obtaining the approximate scattered field, we exploit a newly developed globally convergent numerical method to solve the coefficient inverse problem with the phased scattering data. The latter is the second stage of our algorithm. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of our method. Finally, we present a numerical study which aims to show that, under a certain assumption, the solution of the scattering problem for the 3D scalar Helmholtz equation can be used to approximate the component of the electric field which was originally incident upon the medium.

This paper is concerned with the numerical solution to a 3D coefficient inverse problem for buried objects with multi-frequency experimental data. The measured data, which are associated with a single direction of an incident plane wave, are backscatter data for targets buried in a sandbox. These raw scattering data were collected using a microwave scattering facility at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We develop a data preprocessing procedure and exploit a newly developed globally convergent inversion method for solving the inverse problem with these preprocessed data. It is shown that dielectric constants of the buried targets as well as their locations are reconstructed with a very good accuracy. We also prove a new analytical result which rigorously justifies an important step of the so-called "data propagation" procedure., Comment: 30 pages

The goal of this paper is to reconstruct spatially distributed dielectric constants from complex-valued scattered wave field by solving a 3D coefficient inverse problem for the Helmholtz equation at multi-frequencies. The data are generated by only a single direction of the incident plane wave. To solve this inverse problem, a globally convergent algorithm is analytically developed. We prove that this algorithm provides a good approximation for the exact coefficient without any \textit{a priori} knowledge of any point in a small neighborhood of that coefficient. This is the main advantage of our method, compared with classical approaches using optimization schemes. Numerical results are presented for both computationally simulated data and experimental data. Potential applications of this problem are in detection and identification of explosive-like targets., Comment: 31 pages

The recently developed globally convergent numerical method for an inverse medium problem for the Helmholtz equation is tested on experimental data. The data were originally collected in the time domain, whereas the method works in the frequency domain with the multi-frequency data. Due to a huge discrepancy between the collected and computationally simulated data, the straightforward Fourier transform of the experimental data does not work. Hence, it is necessary to develop a heuristic data preprocessing procedure. This procedure is described. The preprocessed data are used as the input for the inversion algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate good accuracy in the reconstruction of both refracive indices and locations of targets. Furthermore, the reconstruction errors for refractive indices of dielectric targets are significantly less than errors of a posteriori direct measurements.

We analyze in this paper the performance of a newly developed globally convergent numerical method for a coefficient inverse problem for the case of multi-frequency experimental backscatter data associated to a single incident wave. These data were collected using a microwave scattering facility at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The challenges for the inverse problem under the consideration are not only from its high nonlinearity and severe ill-posedness but also from the facts that the amount of the measured data is minimal and that these raw data are contaminated by a significant amount of noise, due to a non-ideal experimental setup. This setup is motivated by our target application in detecting and identifying explosives. We show in this paper how the raw data can be preprocessed and successfully inverted using our inversion method. More precisely, we are able to reconstruct the dielectric constants and the locations of the scattering objects with a good accuracy, without using any advanced \emph{a priori} knowledge of their physical and geometrical properties.

A 3-D inverse medium problem in the frequency domain is considered. Another name for this problem is Coefficient Inverse Problem. The goal is to reconstruct spatially distributed dielectric constants from scattering data. Potential applications are in detection and identification of explosive-like targets. A single incident plane wave and multiple frequencies are used. A new numerical method is proposed. A theorem is proved, which claims that a small neigborhood of the exact solution of that problem is reached by this method without any advanced knowledge of that neighborhood. We call this property of that numerical method "global convergence". Results of numerical experiments for the case of the backscattering data are presented.

In this paper, a reconstruction method for the spatially distributed dielectric constant of a medium from the back scattering wave field in the frequency domain is considered. Our approach is to propose a globally convergent algorithm, which does not require any knowledge of a small neighborhood of the solution of the inverse problem in advance. The Quasi-Reversibility Method (QRM) is used in the algorithm. The convergence of the QRM is proved via a Carleman estimate. The method is tested on both computationally simulated and experimental data.

Inverse scattering problems without the phase information arise in imaging of nanostructures whose sizes are hundreds of nanometers as well as in imaging of biological cells. The governing equation is the 3-d generalized Helmholtz equation with the unknown coefficient, which represents the spatially distributed dielectric constant. It is assumed that only the modulus of the complex valued wave field is measured on a frequency range. The phase is not measured. Two rigorous numerical methods are tested and their performances are compared for realistic ranges of parameters.