A Paley-Wiener-Type Theorem with Applications to Inverse Medium Scattering for the Schrödinger Equation

Abstract

This paper develops a new uniqueness framework for inverse scattering problems for the time-harmonic Schrödinger equation using multi-frequency data. Our approach is based on a Paley-Wiener-type theorem that characterizes the support of the potential through the asymptotic growth of a generalized Fourier integral along imaginary frequencies, allowing for nontrivial amplitude functions. Within this framework, we obtain two major results on identifying the shape of the support of the potential in three dimensions, for both the plane-wave incidence and point source incidence, respectively. For plane-wave incidence, we prove that the location and shape of the convex compact support of an essentially bounded potential are uniquely determined by fixed-angle far-field data from two opposite incident directions or by backscattering far field data, provided that the potential is real-valued and sign-definite near the boundary of its support. For point-source incidence, we show that near-field backscattering data, namely the scattered field evaluated at the source point as the source ranges over a sufficiently large sphere, uniquely determine the location and shape of the convex support under the same assumptions on the potential. The proofs rely on meromorphic extension and the Paley-Wiener-type theorem.