Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/iii/paper-335/2/ii/solution

Use
The adjoint operator is consequently
With a unitary Fourier normalization, this is simply .
At fixed incident direction and wavenumber, define
Taking the complex conjugate of the kernel gives
The least-squares minimizer of satisfies the normal equation for a linear inverse problem . Fourier inversion on the measured transfer-vector set is exactly the corresponding Moore--Penrose reconstruction ; hence the formal solution in part (i) is the minimum-norm least-squares solution when the data are incomplete or inconsistent.

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