Regularization strategy for inverse problem for 1+1 dimensional wave equation

Abstract

An inverse boundary value problem for a 1+1 dimensional wave equation with wave speed $c(x)$ is considered. We give a regularisation strategy for inverting the map $\mathcal A:c\mapsto Λ,$ where $Λ$ is the hyperbolic Neumann-to-Dirichlet map corresponding to the wave speed $c$. More precisely, we consider the case when we are given a perturbation of the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map $\tilde Λ=Λ+\mathcal E $, where $\mathcal E$ corresponds to the measurement errors, and reconstruct an approximate wave speed $\tilde c$. We emphasize that $\tilde Λ$ may not not be in the range of the map $\mathcal A$. We show that the reconstructed wave speed $\tilde c$ satisfies $\| \tilde c-c\|_{L^\infty}<C \|E\|^{1/18}$. Our regularization strategy is based on a new formula to compute $c$ from $Λ$.