Imaging point sources in heterogeneous environments

Abstract

Imaging point sources in heterogeneous environments from boundary or far-field measurements has been extensively studied in the past. In most existing results, the environment, represented by the refractive index function in the model equation, is assumed known in the imaging process. In this work, we investigate the impact of environment uncertainty on the reconstruction of point sources inside it. Following the techniques developed by El Badia and El Hajj (C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I, 350 (2012), 1031-1035), we derive stability of reconstructing point sources in heterogeneous media with respect to measurement error as well as smooth changes in the environment, that is, the refractive index. Numerical simulations with synthetic data are presented to further explore the derived stability properties.