A new algorithm to determine the creation or depletion term of parabolic equations from boundary measurements (Q2212326)

This work is concerned with a numerical method for reconstructing a spatially varying zeroth-order coefficient in a linear parabolic equation from lateral Cauchy data. Expanding the solution in a special orthonormal basis of \(L^2(0,T)\) leads to a coupled system of stationary nonlinear partial differential equations for the (space-dependent) Fourier coefficients with overdetermined boundary data. These are then linearized via a fixed-point iteration, and the linear overdetermined problems are solved using the quasi-reversibility method (i.e., by solving an \(H^2\)-regularized least-squares problem instead of the equation). An error estimate for the quasi-reversibility method is derived and the performance of the full reconstruction algorithm for the coefficient is illustrated with numerical examples.