An inversion formula for the spherical transform in \(S^{2}\) for a special family of circles of integration (Q281024)

The author gives an inversion formula in the following situation. Let \(S^2\) be the Euclidean unit sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and \(\Gamma\) a family of circles in \(S^2\). The spherical transform of \(f\in C^{\infty}(S^2)\) is given by \[ Sf:S^2\times[0,1]\to\mathbb{R},\quad (Sf)(\psi,t)=\int_{\{x\in S^2:x\cdot\psi=t\}}f(x)dS_x, \] where \(\cdot\) denotes the usual inner product in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and \(dS_x\) is the standard measure on the circle of integration. Each \(\psi\in S^2\) gives rise to a circle on \(S^2\) orthogonal to the line through \(\psi\). In the paper under review, \(\Gamma\) is the family of circles obtained by intersections of \(S^2\) with hyperplanes passing through a common point \(a\) strictly inside \(S^2\). For \(a=0\) the above transform coincides with the Funk transform. The above inversion problem is translated to a problem of recovering a function on the plane via the stereographic projection.