Optimization-Based Identification of Effective Coefficients for Wave Equations in Spatio-Temporal Metamaterials

Abstract

We study the identification of effective coefficients for wave equations in heterogeneous media. Such equations arise in the modeling of spatio-temporal metamaterials, where the underlying material properties exhibit variations in both space and time. While homogenization provides effective models in the asymptotic regime of vanishing microscopic scales, determining macroscopic parameters from observations of wave propagation remains challenging. We introduce an optimization-based method that identifies a constant effective coefficient by minimizing a cost functional. The approach is designed for situations in which the underlying space-time-dependent coefficient is unknown, while the solution is available in space and time by measurements. We extend optimization-based coefficient identification techniques from elliptic multiscale problems to wave equations and prove that, provided a homogenized limit exists, the identified coefficient converges to the homogenized coefficient as the microscopic scale tends to zero. Furthermore, we establish convergence of the corresponding effective solution towards the heterogeneous solution, including strong convergence in $L^2$ and weak convergence of first-order space and time derivatives. Numerical experiments further demonstrate the performance of the method for non-periodic space-time heterogeneous media, including cases for which a homogenized limit is not known to exist.