Stability for the lens rigidity problem

Abstract

Let $g$ be a Riemannian metric for $\mathbf{R}^d$ ($d\geq 3$) which differs from the Euclidean metric only in a smooth and strictly convex bounded domain $M$. The lens rigidity problem is concerned with recovering the metric $g$ inside $M$ from the corresponding lens relation on the boundary $\partial M$. In this paper, the stability of the lens rigidity problem is investigated for metrics which are a priori close to a given non-trapping metric satisfying "strong fold-regular" condition. A metric $g$ is called strong fold-regular if for each point $x\in M$, there exists a set of geodesics passing through $x$ whose conormal bundle covers $T^*_{x}M$. Moreover, these geodesics contain either no conjugate points or only fold conjugate points with a non-degeneracy condition. Examples of strong fold-regular metrics are constructed and are expected to be generic. Our main result gives the first stability result for the lens rigidity problem in the case of anisotropic metrics which allow conjugate points. The approach is based on the study of the linearized inverse problem of recovering a metric from its induced geodesic flow, which is a weighted geodesic X-ray transform problem for symmetric 2-tensor fields. A key ingredient is to show that the kernel of the X-ray transform on symmetric solenoidal 2-tensor fields is of finite dimension. It remains open whether the kernel space is trivial or not.