The geometry of convex surfaces and inverse problems of scattering theory (Q1920810)

The authors study the inverse problem to determine the shape of a convex body from certain functionals of the orthogonal projections of the surfaces onto planes and their illuminated parts. As an application they treat the inverse obstacle scattering problem in the Kirchhoff approximation. In the first part, they study a class of integral equations of the first kind on the sphere, where the region of the integrations depends heavily on the illuminated part. The authors compute the eigenvalues and a complete set of eigenfunctions of the corresponding (selfadjoint) integral operator. Mapping properties and an inversion formula are shown. In the second part, they apply the results to the inverse scattering problem by mean of appropriately chosen surface measures.