Recovery of time-dependent damping coefficients and potentials appearing in wave equations from partial data

Abstract

We consider the inverse problem of determining a time-dependent damping coefficient $a$ and a time-dependent potential $q$, appearing in the wave equation $\partial_t^2u-\Delta_x u+a(t,x)\partial_tu+q(t,x)u=0$ in $Q=(0,T)\times\Omega$, with $T>0$ and $\Omega$ a $ \mathcal C^2$ bounded domain of $\mathbb R^n$, $n\geq2$, from partial observations of the solutions on $\partial Q$. More precisely, we look for observations on $\partial Q$ that allow to determine uniquely a large class of time-dependent damping coefficients $a$ and time-dependent potentials $q$ without involving an important set of data. We prove global unique determination of $a\in W^{1,p}(Q)$, with $p>n+1$, and $q\in L^\infty(Q)$ from partial observations on $\partial Q$.