Reconstruction techniques for complex potentials

Abstract

An approach for solving a variety of inverse coefficient problems for the Sturm–Liouville equation −y″ + q(x)y = ρ2y with a complex valued potential q(x) is presented. It is based on Neumann series of Bessel functions representations for solutions. With their aid the problem is reduced to a system of linear algebraic equations for the coefficients of the representations. The potential is recovered from an arithmetic combination of the first two coefficients. Special cases of the considered problems include the recovery of the potential from a Weyl function, inverse two-spectrum Sturm–Liouville problems, as well as the inverse scattering problem on a finite interval. The approach leads to efficient numerical algorithms for solving coefficient inverse problems. Numerical efficiency is illustrated by several examples.