Optical tomography in two dimensions (Q2565447)

The authors are concerned with recovering the absorption coefficient \(\sigma\geq 0\) in the 2D stationary transport boundary value problem \[ \begin{aligned} -\cos(\theta)D_{x_1}f(x,\theta) -\sin(\theta)D_{x_2}f(x,\theta) -\sigma(x)f(x,\theta) +\int_{S^1} k(x,\theta',\theta) f(x,\theta')d\theta'=0,\\ x\in X,\;\theta',\theta\in [0,2\pi],\quad f=f_-\quad \text{ on\;} \Gamma_-. \end{aligned}\tag{1} \] Here \(X\), \(k\in L^\infty(X\times [0,2\pi]\times [0,2\pi])\), \(f_-\) and \(\Gamma_\pm\) denote, respectively, a bounded convex set in \({\mathbb R}^2\) with a smooth boundary, a nonnegative function, a function in \(C^\infty_0(\Gamma_-)\) and the sets \[ \Gamma_\pm = \{(x,\theta)\in \partial X\times [0,2\pi]: \pm n(x)\cdot (\cos(\theta),\sin(\theta))>0\}, \] \(n(x)\) being the outer normal to \(\partial X\) at \(x\in \partial X\). \noindent To recover the function \(\sigma\) the authors endow problem (1) with the so-called \textit{albedo} operator \({\mathcal A}\) defined by \[ {\mathcal A}f_-=f_+=:f_{| \Gamma_+}\in L^\infty(\Gamma_+). \] The two main results of the paper deal with a uniqueness result concerning the pair \((\sigma,k)\) in \(L^\infty(X)\times L^\infty(X\times [0,2\pi]\times [0,2\pi])\) and with a continuous dependence one -- of Hölder type -- in the space \(H^s(X)\times L^\infty(X\times [0,2\pi]\times [0,2\pi])\), \(s>1\), provided the norm of \(k\) is small enough in both cases. More exactly, this means that, if the norm of \(\sigma\) does not exceed a given \(\Sigma>0\), the norm of \(k\) must be small enough in comparison with \(\Sigma\).