On the light ray transform of wave equation solutions (Q2025635)

Let \(M = [t_{0}, t_{1}]\times {\mathbb R}^{3}\) and let \(g_{M}= =-dt^{2} +dx^{2}\) be the Minkowski metric on \(M\). Consider the Lorentzian manifold \((M, g_{M})\) and the light ray transform \[ X_{M}(f)(\gamma)=\int_{0}^{t_{1}-t_{0}}f(\gamma(\tau))\,d\tau,\ \gamma(\tau)=(t_{0},x_{0})+\tau(t_{1},v),\ f\in C_{0}^{\infty}(M), \] for scalar functions defined on \((M, g_{M})\). Under consideration is the inverse hyperbolic problem of finding the functions \(f_{i}(x)\) \((i=1,2)\) and a solution \(u\) to the problem \[ u_{tt} -\Delta u=0,\ \ u|_{t=t_{0}}=f_{1},\ u_{t}|_{t=t_{0}}=f_{2}, \] under the condition that the light ray transform of \(u\) is given for \(x_{0}\in {\mathbb R}^{3}\), \(v\in {\mathbb S}^{2}\), with \({\mathbb S}^{2}\) the unit sphere in \({\mathbb R}^{3}\). Under certain smoothness assumptions on the data, it is proven that this problem is uniquely solvable and that the solution depends on the data continuously. The connections of this problem with the inverse problems of the Sachs-Wolfe effect in cosmology are discussed.