INVERSE PROBLEMS FOR LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR HYPERBOLIC EQUATIONS

We consider inverse problems for hyperbolic equations and systems and the solutions of these problems based on the focusing of waves. Several inverse problems for linear equations can be solved using control theory. When the coefficients of the modelling equation are unknown, the construction of the point sources requires solving blind control problems. For non-linear equations we consider a new artificial point source method that applies the non-linear interaction of waves to create microlocal points sources inside the unknown medium. The novel feature of this method is that it utilizes the non-linearity as a tool in imaging, instead of considering it as a difficult perturbation of the system. To demonstrate the method, we consider the non-linear wave equation and the coupled Einstein and scalar field equations.