Existence and Uniqueness Theorems in the Inverse Problem of Recovering Surface Fluxes from Pointwise Measurements

Abstract

Inverse problems of recovering surface fluxes on the boundary of a domain from pointwise observations are considered. Sharp conditions on the data ensuring existence and uniqueness of solutions in Sobolev classes are exposed. They are smoothness conditions on the data, geometric conditions on the location of measurement points, and the boundary of a domain. The proof relies on asymptotics of fundamental solutions to the corresponding elliptic problems and the Laplace transform. The inverse problem is reduced to a linear algebraic system with a nondegerate matrix.