Inverse Problems and Spectral Theory for Elliptic Operators

该项目涉及科学和技术中出现的几个基本逆问题的数学理论的发展，以及来自电磁学和量子力学问题的光谱理论的重大问题的进展。 广义地说，在逆问题中，人们希望通过沿介质的边界沿着进行测量来确定介质的内部性质。例如，在电阻抗断层成像中，人们试图通过在边界处进行电压和电流测量来恢复身体的导电性。 由于反问题是各种工程和科学研究的核心，包括医学成像、地震学、石油勘探、雷达成像和非破坏性测试，因此此类问题的数学理论的任何进一步进展无疑将具有真实的世界应用。 光谱理论研究各种不同物体的振动及其频率，从化学中的原子和分子到声波波导中的障碍物。从天体到量子力学的许多科学和工程问题中具有重要意义的基本问题，包括决定这种振动何时发生，如何计算它们的频率，以及了解振动的大小和局部化。该项目的目的是通过集中研究量子力学的模型问题，特别是在物理相关的高频率领域，提高我们对这些问题的理解。该项目涉及以下重要课题：椭圆偏微分方程（PDE）的逆边界问题的数学理论，椭圆PDE的调和分析，以及周期系数椭圆PDE的谱理论。虽然这些主题起源于不同的数学社区，但最近的工作表明，各种主题中的技术和见解是密切相关的，并以富有成效的方式相互作用。该项目的一个新想法是扩大这种互动，以解决所有这些领域的重大问题。 尽管在过去的30年中获得了令人印象深刻的身体的反问题领域的结果，许多基本的问题仍然没有解决，包括反问题的偏微分方程与不规则系数，部分数据的问题时，测量只进行了一部分的边界，和反问题的流形。该项目的第一部分的目标是攻击这些问题的几个基本的椭圆偏微分方程，特别是电导率，磁薛定谔方程和多谐方程，以及麦克斯韦系统。第二个主题是关于紧流形和非紧流形上的椭圆算子在勒贝格空间中的预解式估计。除了它们在光谱和散射理论中的内在意义外，这种估计在控制理论和逆问题中也是至关重要的。这里的目的是了解如何动力学的基本汉密尔顿流的运营商和正则性的系数，每个影响的频谱估计。第三个主题讨论了来自固体物理的周期系数Schroedinger型算子的谱理论。一个中心问题涉及的性质的频谱等运营商，其中之一是纯粹的绝对连续。 在欧几里得情形中早已知道，它对于一般的拉普拉斯-贝尔特拉米型算子仍然是开放的。我们的目标是解决这个猜想在几个重要的特殊情况下的黎曼度量。

The project is concerned with development of the mathematical theory for several fundamental inverse problems arising in science and technology, as well as with achieving advances in significant questions of spectral theory coming from problems of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Broadly speaking, in an inverse problem, one wishes to determine internal properties of a medium by performing measurements along the boundary of the medium. For instance, in electrical impedance tomography, one attempts to recover the conductivity of a body by making voltage and current measurements at the boundary. Since inverse problems are at the core of a variety of engineering and scientific investigations, including medical imaging, seismography, oil prospection, radar imaging, and non-destructive testing, any further progress in the mathematical theory of such problems will undoubtedly have real world applications. Spectral theory deals with the investigation of vibrations and their frequencies for a variety of different objects, ranging from atoms and molecules in chemistry to obstacles in acoustic waveguides. The fundamental issues, which are of great significance in many problems of science and engineering, from celestial to quantum mechanics, include deciding when such vibrations occur, how to go about computing their frequencies, as well as understanding the size and localization of the vibrations. The aim of the project is to advance our understanding of these issues by concentrating on model problems of quantum mechanics, specifically in the physically relevant regime of high frequencies.The project addresses the following significant topics: the mathematical theory of inverse boundary problems for elliptic partial differential equations (PDE), harmonic analysis for elliptic PDE, and spectral theory of elliptic PDE with periodic coefficients. Although these topics have originated in distinct mathematical communities, recent work has shown that techniques and insights in the various topics are closely related and interact in a fruitful way. A novel idea of the project is to expand this interaction to solve significant problems in all of these areas. Despite an impressive body of results in the field of inverse problems obtained within the last 30 years, many fundamental questions still remain unsolved, including inverse problems for PDE with irregular coefficients, partial data problems when measurements are performed only on a portion of the boundary, and inverse problems on manifolds. The goal of the first part of the project is to attack these problems for several fundamental elliptic PDE, in particular the conductivity, magnetic Schroedinger, and polyharmonic equations, as well as the Maxwell system. The second topic is concerned with estimates for resolvents of elliptic operators on compact and non-compact manifolds, in Lebesgue spaces. Apart from their intrinsic significance in spectral and scattering theory, such estimates are crucial in control theory and inverse problems. The aim here is to understand how the dynamics of the underlying Hamilton flow of the operator and regularity of the coefficients each impacts on the spectral estimates. The third topic deals with the spectral theory of Schroedinger type operators with periodic coefficients, coming from solid state physics. A central question concerns the nature of the spectra of such operators, which one conjectures to be purely absolutely continuous. Long known in the Euclidean case, it is still wide open for general Laplace-Beltrami type operators. The objective is to resolve this conjecture in several significant special cases of Riemannian metrics.