Inverse problems for Lorentzian manifolds and non-linear hyperbolic equations (Q1645326): Difference between revisions

First, two inverse problems on a globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold \((M, g)\) are studied. In the former problem for passive observations, a region \(W\) of a Lorentzian manifold is constructed with the use of the light observation sets corresponding to points \(q\in W\) which are the intersections of a given open set \(V\) and the future light cone emanating from the source point \(q\). Under appropriate conditions, it is shown that \(W\) can be reconstructed as a topological manifold from these data. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the differentiable structure of \(W\) and the conformal class of \(g|_{W}\) can be reconstructed as well. In the latter problem, the authors consider the nonlinear wave equation \[ \begin{aligned} \square_{g}u(x)+a(x)u^{2}(x)=f,\;\;x\in M, \\ u(x) = 0, \;\text{outside causal future of supp}\,(f), \end{aligned} \] and active measurements in spacetime. Given a neighborhood \(V\) of the time-like path \(\mu\) and the source-to-solution operator that maps the source supported on \(V\) to the restriction of the solution of the wave equation to \(V\). When \(M\) is 4-dimensional, they show that these data determine the topological, differentiable, and conformal structures of the spacetime (or even the metric tensor in some cases) in the maximal set, where waves can propagate from \(\mu\) and return back to \(\mu\).