Analysis of new direct sampling indicators for far-field measurements

This article focuses on the analysis of three direct sampling indicators which can be used for recovering scatterers from the far-field pattern of time-harmonic acoustic measurements. These methods fall under the category of sampling methods where an indicator function is constructed using the far-field operator. Motivated by some recent work, we study the standard indicator using the far-field operator and two indicators derived from the factorization method. We show the equivalence of two indicators previously studied as well as propose a new indicator based on the Tikhonov regularization applied to the far-field equation for the factorization method. Finally, we give some numerical examples to show how the reconstructions compare to other direct sampling methods

Generalized linear sampling method for elastic-wave sensing of heterogeneous fractures

A theoretical foundation is developed for active seismic reconstruction of fractures endowed with spatially-varying interfacial condition (e.g.~partially-closed fractures, hydraulic fractures). The proposed indicator functional carries a superior localization property with no significant sensitivity to the fracture's contact condition, measurement errors, and illumination frequency. This is accomplished through the paradigm of the $F_\sharp$-factorization technique and the recently developed Generalized Linear Sampling Method (GLSM) applied to elastodynamics. The direct scattering problem is formulated in the frequency domain where the fracture surface is illuminated by a set of incident plane waves, while monitoring the induced scattered field in the form of (elastic) far-field patterns. The analysis of the well-posedness of the forward problem leads to an admissibility condition on the fracture's (linearized) contact parameters. This in turn contributes toward establishing the applicability of the $F_\sharp$-factorization method, and consequently aids the formulation of a convex GLSM cost functional whose minimizer can be computed without iterations. Such minimizer is then used to construct a robust fracture indicator function, whose performance is illustrated through a set of numerical experiments. For completeness, the results of the GLSM reconstruction are compared to those obtained by the classical linear sampling method (LSM)

Some inverse problems arising from elastic scattering by rigid obstacles

In the first part, it is proved that a $C^2$-regular rigid scatterer in $\R^3$ can be uniquely identified by the shear part (i.e. S-part) of the far-field pattern corresponding to all incident shear waves at any fixed frequency. The proof is short and it is based on a kind of decoupling of the S-part of scattered wave from its pressure part (i.e. P-part) on the boundary of the scatterer. Moreover, uniqueness using the S-part of the far-field pattern corresponding to only one incident plane shear wave holds for a ball or a convex Lipschitz polyhedron. In the second part, we adapt the factorization method to recover the shape of a rigid body from the scattered S-waves (resp. P-waves) corresponding to all incident plane shear (resp. pressure) waves. Numerical examples illustrate the accuracy of our reconstruction in $\R^2$. In particular, the factorization method also leads to some uniqueness results for all frequencies excluding possibly a discrete set

On the topological sensitivity of transient acoustic fields

The concept of topological sensitivity has been successfully employed as an imaging tool to obtain the correct initial topology and preliminary geometry of hidden obstacles for a variety of inverse scattering problems. In this paper, we extend these ideas to acoustic scattering involving transient waveforms and penetrable obstacles. Through a boundary integral equation framework, we present a derivation of the topological sensitivity for the featured class of problems and illustrate numerically the utility of the proposed method for preliminary geometric reconstruction of penetrable obstacles. For generality, we also cast the topological sensitivity in the so-called adjoint field setting that is amenable to a generic computational treatment using, for example, finite element or finite difference methods

Monotonicity in inverse scattering for Maxwell’s equations

We consider the inverse scattering problem to recover the support of penetrable scattering objects in three-dimensional free space from far field observations of scattered time-harmonic electromagnetic waves. The observed far field data are described by far field operators that map superpositions of plane wave incident fields to the far field patterns of the corresponding scattered waves. We discuss monotonicity relations for the eigenvalues of linear combinations of these operators with suitable probing operators. These monotonicity relations yield criteria and algorithms for reconstructing the support of scattering objects from the corresponding far field operators. To establish these results we combine the monotonicity relations with certain localized vector wave functions that have arbitrarily large energy in some prescribed region while at the same time having arbitrarily small energy on some other prescribed region. Throughout we suppose that the relative magnetic permeability of the scattering objects is one, while their real-valued relative electric permittivity maybe inhomogeneous and the permittivity contrast may even change sign. Numerical examples illustrate our theoretical findings