Ultra-hyperbolic approach to some multi-dimensional inverse problems (Q910621)

Suppose that \(P_ k=div(a^{(k)}\text{grad})+c^{(k)}\) \((k=1,2)\) are two uniformly elliptic linear operators with smooth coefficients related to a smooth bounded open set \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^ n\). Assume that \(\Gamma\) is a subset of \(\partial \Omega\) with positive measure and that \(\nu^{(k)}=a^{(k)}n\) denotes the conormal vector field associated with each operator \(P_ k\) on \(\partial \Omega\). Let then \(u_ k\) be the solution to the initial boundary value problem \[ D_ tu_ k(x,t)=P_ ku_ k(x,t),\quad (x,t)\in \Omega \times (0,+\infty);\quad u_ k(x,0)=0,\quad x\in \Omega, \] \[ \nu^{(k)}\cdot \text{grad} u_ k(x,t)=f(x)h(t),\quad (x,t)\in \partial \Omega \times (0,+\infty) \] with \(h\not\equiv 0\). Suppose that that \[ (1)\quad u_ 1(x,t)=u_ 2(x,t),\quad (x,t)\in \Gamma \times (0,T) \] for some positive T. Using spectral techniques the author proves that, under suitable assumptions for f, additional information (1) yields the identifiability equality \(P_ 1=P_ 2\).