Determination of source and initial values for acoustic equations with a time-fractional attenuation

Abstract

We consider the inverse problem of determining the initial states or the source term of a hyperbolic equation damped by some non-local time-fractional derivative. This framework is relevant to medical imaging such as thermoacoustic or photoacoustic tomography. We prove a stability estimate for each of these two problems, with the aid of a Carleman estimate specifically designed for the governing equation.