Ray transform on Sobolev spaces of symmetric tensor fields. I: Higher order Reshetnyak formulas (Q2158252)

The ray transform $I$ integrates functions or more generally symmetric tensor fields over lines in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) and the Radon transform \(R\) integrates functions over hyperplanes. The ray transform of functions is the main mathematical tool of computer tomography. The ray transform of vector fields and second rank tensor fields is used in Doppler tomography and travel time tomography. Note that the Radon transform and ray transform of functions coincide up to parametrization in the 2-dimensional case. Let \(\mathcal{S}(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\times \mathbb{R})\) be the Schwartz space of rapidly decreasing functions on \(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\times \mathbb{R}\), where \(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\) is the unit sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^n\). Yu.~Reshetnyak, in an unpublished work from around 1960, gave a representation of the \(L^2\)-norm for \(f\in \mathcal{S}(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\times \mathbb{R})\) that is called the Plancherel formula for the Radon transform (the authors of the present paper use the term the Reshetnyak formula). The main importance of the Reshetnyak formula is the statement about isometry of the Radon transform. There must be a similar formula for the Sobolev norm of the function \(f\) that includes the classical one. The present paper is dedicated to finding such classes of \(\mathcal{S}(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\times \mathbb{R})\) spaces and such Sobolev norms. The theory of the ray transform is to some extent similar to the theory of the Radon transform. Some results for the ray transform which are similar to the statements for the Radon transform are presented.