
202 Chapter 6 Right-hand side identification
We supplement this equation with first-kind homogeneous boundary conditions:
u(0, t) = 0, u(l, t) = 0, 0 ≤ t ≤ T. (6.111)
The initial state is defined by the condition
u(x, 0) = 0, 0 < x < l. (6.112)
With given coefficient k(x) and right-hand side f (x), relations (6.110)–(6.112) define
the direct problem.
Consider an inverse problem in which the unknown quantity is the right-hand side
f (x) of equation (6.110). We assume that the function f (x) can be reconstructed from
the known end-time solution; i.e., this function can be represented as
u(x, T ) = ϕ(x), 0 < x < l. (6.113)
To begin with, obtain an a priori estimate for the solution u(x, t) of the problem that
proves the solution to be stable with respect to weak perturbations of ϕ(x).
6.4.2 Estimate of stability
The simplest approach to the inverse problem (6.110)–(6.113) consists in elimination
of the unknown function ϕ(x). To this end, we differentiate the equation (6.110) with
respect to time:
∂
2
u
∂t
2
=
∂
∂x
k(x)
∂
2
u
∂x∂t
, 0 < x < l, 0 < t < T. (6.114)
For the latter equation, two boundary conditions, (6.112) and (6.113), are given for the
variable t.
For the problem (6.111)–(6.114), we use the operator notation that can be used to
study more general problems. We introduce a Hilbert space L
2
() with the following
scalar product and norm:
(v, w) =
v(x)w(x) dx, v
2
= (v, v) =
v
2
(x) dx.
For the functions v(x, t), w(x, t) from H = L
2
(Q
T
),weput
(v, w)
∗
=
T
0
(v, w) dt =
T
0
v(x)w(x) dx dt, v
∗
= ((v, v)
∗
)
1/2
.
On the set of functions satisfying the conditions (6.111), we define the operator
Au =−
d
dx
k(x)
du
dx
.