Recovering differential operators with nonlocal boundary conditions (Q503402)

The following differential equation is studied: \[ -y''(x)+q(x)y(x) = \lambda y(x), \quad x\in (0,T)\tag{1} \] together with the linear forms \[ U_j(y):= \int_0^T y(t) d\sigma _j(t), \quad j=1,2.\tag{2} \] Here \(q \in L(0,T)\) is a complex valued function and \(\sigma _j(t)\) are complex valued functions of bounded variations that are continuous from the right for \(t>0\). Two inverse spectral problems are solved: (I) Given the Weyl-type function \(M(\lambda )\) together with the function \(\omega (\lambda )\), then the potential \(q(x)\) can be uniquely determined. Here, \(\omega (\lambda )\) is the characteristic function of the boundary value problem \(L_0\) given by (1) with \(U_1(y) = U_2(y) =0\). It should be noted that this uniqueness result is only true under the assumption that the set of zeros of \(\omega (\lambda )\) intersected with the eigenvalue set of the boundary value problem \(L_1\) (equation (1) together with \(U_1(y) = y(T) = 0\)) is empty. If this assumption does not hold extra spectral information is needed to prove the uniqueness. (II) Given two spectra corresponding to the boundary value problems (1) with \(U_1(y) = y(T) = 0\) and (1) with \(U_1(y) = y'(T) = 0\) (the intersection of these two spectra is empty), then it is possible to find the potential \(q(x)\) uniquely a.e. on \((0,T)\). This is a generalization (in the sense that there are no restrictions on the behavior of the spectra) of Borg's famous inverse problem for Sturm-Liouville operators with classical two point separated boundary conditions.