Acoustic inverse source problem ($(\Delta +k^2)\psi =Q$)

Recover a compactly supported acoustic source $Q$ from measurements of its outgoing field, such as its far-field pattern. The Helmholtz equation forward problem is specified with the Sommerfeld radiation condition. At a single frequency, the source-to-far-field operator at fixed frequency has invisible fixed-frequency nonradiating sources, and its compactness makes recovery of the visible component unstable.

A source is nonradiating at frequency $k$ if its outgoing field has zero far-field pattern. For every $\chi \in C_c^{\infty }(A)$, the source $Q=(\Delta +k^2)\chi$ has outgoing field $\psi =\chi$ and is invisible outside $A$. Integration by parts shows that its Fourier transform vanishes on $|\mathbf{\xi }|=k$, so it belongs to the kernel of a linear map defined by the source-to-far-field operator at fixed frequency. This family proves nonuniqueness independently of the instability of the inverse.

For $(\Delta +k^2)\psi =Q$, the outgoing Green function for the three-dimensional Helmholtz equation yields the far-field patternThe sign corresponds to the Green function satisfying $(\Delta +k^2)G=-\delta$. This Hilbert-Schmidt operator samples the source Fourier transform on the sphere $|\mathbf{\xi }|=k$; for a ball of radius $r_0$, its squared Hilbert-Schmidt norm is $r_0^3/3$.

The adjoint source-to-far-field operator composed with the source-to-far-field operator at fixed frequency has volume kernel $K(\mathbf{r},{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime })=(4\pi {)}^{-1}\mathrm{sinc}(k|\mathbf{r}-{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }|)$, where $\mathrm{sinc}(s)=\sin (s)/s$ and $\mathrm{sinc}(0)=1$. This follows from ${\int }_{S_1}{e}^{ik\mathbf{\theta }\cdot \mathbf{d}}dS=4\pi \mathrm{sinc}(k|\mathbf{d}|)$. Its smoothing action helps explain the unstable normal equation for a linear inverse problem.

With complex inner products linear in the first argument, the adjoint operator of the source-to-far-field operator at fixed frequency isIt is a normalized Herglotz wave function. Complex conjugation reverses the phase sign, while retaining the real factor $-1/(4\pi )$.