Phase retrieval for the Cauchy wavelet transform (Q905614)

In the classical phase retrieval problem, one has to reconstruct a compactly supported function \(f\in L^2(\mathbb R)\) from the given modulus of its Fourier transform. In this interesting paper, the authors study a generalized phase retrieval problem in which one has to reconstruct \(f\in L^2(\mathbb R)\) from given moduli \(|f \ast \psi_j|\), \(j\in \mathbb Z\), where \(\psi \in L^1(\mathbb R) \cap L^2(\mathbb R)\) is a Cauchy wavelet, \(\ast\) denotes the convolution, and \(\psi_j(x) := a^{-j}\,\psi(a^{-j}\,x)\) with a dilation factor \(a>1\). The authors investigate mainly the uniqueness and stability of the reconstruction. It is shown that the reconstruction is unique up to a global phase, and that the reconstruction is continuous, but not uniformly continuous. Modulating the wavelet transform of a function by slow-varying phases, the authors construct very different functions with almost the same moduli of wavelet transforms. Finally, the authors present a reconstruction algorithm, where an error function is minimized by gradient descent and refined by the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm. Numerical experiments investigate mainly the stability of the reconstruction.