The attenuated magnetic ray transform on surfaces (Q1953860)

Let \((M, g)\) be a compact, oriented Riemannian \(2\)-manifold with boundary and denote by \(X\) the geodesic spray of \(g\). Since \(M\) is oriented its unit tangent bundle \(SM\) is an \(S^1\)-fibration with a circle action on the fibres inducing a vector field \(V\). Fix a \(1\)-form \(\alpha \), a unitary connection \(A:TM\rightarrow u(n)\) and a smooth function \(f: SM\rightarrow \mathbb{C}^n\). We obtain the \(2\)-form \(\Omega =d\alpha =\lambda dV_g\). Let \(\mathcal{A}=A+\Phi \) with \(\Phi :M\rightarrow u(n)\). The transport equation \((X+\lambda V)u+\mathcal{A}u=-f\) in \(SM\) and \(u|_{\partial _{-}(SM)}=0\) is a linear system of ODEs with zero initial condition and it has a unique solution \(u^f\). Therefore, the ``magnetic ray transform'' of \(f\in C^{\infty }(SM, \mathbb{C}^n)\) with attenuation \(\mathcal{A}\) is given by \(I_{\mathcal{A}, \Phi }f=u^f|_{\partial _{+}(SM)}\). One of the main results of this paper is Theorem 1.2: Let \((M, g, \alpha )\) be a simple magnetic system with \(\dim(M)=2\). Assume that \(f:SM\rightarrow \mathbb{C}^n\) is a smooth function such that \(f=F+\sigma \) where \(F:M\rightarrow \mathbb{C}^n\) is a smooth function and \(\sigma \) is a \(\mathbb{C}^n\)-valued \(1\)-form. Let \(A:SM\rightarrow u(n)\) be a unitary connection and \(\Phi :M\rightarrow u(n)\) a skew-Hermitian matrix function. If \(I_{\mathcal{A}, \phi }f=0\) then \(F=\Phi p\) and \(\sigma =d_Ap\) where \(p:M\rightarrow \mathbb{C}^n\) is a smooth function with \(p|_{\partial (M)}=0\). In the final section, an application to tensor tomography is included.