Recovery of multiple coefficients in a reaction-diffusion equation (Q2325995)

The authors consider the inverse problem of recovering coefficients \(a,q\) from a uniformly elliptic operator \[\mathbb{L}u =\nabla \cdot (a(x)\nabla u) +q(x)u\] on a domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n\). The main equation under consideration is thus \[u_t(x,t)+\mathbb{L}u(x,t) = r(x,t,u)\] for a certain forcing function \(r(x,t,u)\). Over-posed data is used, which in this case is a spatial measurement at time \(T\) of the value of a single solution at two later times, or two different sets of boundary conditions. Convergence of an iteration scheme used to recover these coefficients is shown. Finally, these results are generalized to the case when the time derivative is replaced by a Caputo type fractional derivative, and the potential term is coupled with a specific nonlinearity.