Geometric aspects of the inverse scattering problem (Q5966446)

The inverse scattering problem consists of the determination of the scattering surface given functionals of the scattered field. This problem is investigated under the assumption that the scattering surface is strictly convex, centrally symmetric, twice continuously differentiable and that it has positive Gaussian curvature everywhere. The paper consists of three parts of which the first treats some integral equations of the first kind. Results on the differentiability of the solutions and some estimates of these are derived. The second part deals with the properties of areas and lengths of the boundaries of orthogonal projections of surfaces. For example, it is shown that a surface S is analytic if and only if the area of its orthogonal projection is an analytic function on the unit sphere or that the length of the boundary is an analytic function of the unit sphere. Also estimates are given for the closeness of surfaces S for which the areas or lengths of the boundaries of their orthogonal projections onto planes are close. Further, questions are investigated about the existence, uniqueness and regularity of surfaces S for which some given functions represent the areas or the lengths of the boundaries of the orthogonal projections on a plane. In the third part, among other related results, a scattering surface, unique up to parallel translations, is determined from a functional of the scattered field where this functional is directly related to the area of the orthogonal projection of the scattering surface onto a plane; differentiability properties of the surface are discussed.