Injectivity of pairs of non-central Funk transforms

Abstract

We study Funk-type transforms on the unit sphere in R^n associated with cross-sections of the sphere by lower-dimensional planes passing through an arbitrary fixed point inside the sphere or outside. Our main concern is injectivity of the corresponding paired transforms generated by two families of planes centered at distinct points. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the paired transforms to be injective are obtained, depending on geometrical configuration of the centers. Our method relies on the action of the automorphism group of the unit ball and the relevant billiard-like dynamics on the sphere.