An FIO calculus for marine seismic imaging. II: Sobolev estimates (Q663222)

In the first part of the article [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 33, No. 1, 45--77 (2008; Zbl 1151.35111)] the first two authors established a composition calculus for general Fourier integral operators associated with canonical relations for particular types of caustics, which they called cross caps. They considered a linearized inverse problem arising in offshore seismic imaging. They identified the normal operator, which they proved to be in the class \(I^{p,l}(\Delta, C)\) of paired Lagrangian Fourier integral operators, where \(\Delta\) is the diagonal and \(C\) is a folding canonical relation. \noindent In this paper, they consider the loss of smoothness in Sobolev spaces for operators \(A\) in classes \(I^{p,l}(\Delta, C_0)\), \( I^{p,l}(\Delta, C_1)\) and \(I^{p,l}(\Delta, C_2)\) for several types of caustics, with \(C_2 = C\) above, proving that \(A: H^s_{comp} \mapsto H^{s - r}_{loc}\), a loss of \(r\) derivatives. Here \(r = p + 1/6\), \(l<-1/2\), \(r= p + 1/6 + \epsilon\), \(l = -1/2\), \(\forall \epsilon>0\), \(r = p + (l +1)/3\), \(-1/2< l <1/2\), and \(r = p + l\) for \(l \geq 1/2\). \noindent They remark that the theorem can be interpreted to say that when the strengths of the \(\Psi\)DO and FIO parts of \(A\) are sufficiently close, specifically, \(-1/2 \leq l < 1/2\), there is a further loss of smoothness due to their interaction. They show that the loss can occur so that this result is in general sharp.