The article studies inverse problems of determining unknown coefficients in various semi-linear and quasi-linear wave equations given the knowledge of an associated source-to-solution map. We introduce a method to solve inverse problems for nonlinear equations using interaction of three waves that makes it possible to study the inverse problem in all globally hyperbolic spacetimes of the dimension $n+1\geqslant 3$ and with partial data. We consider the case when the set $\Omega _{\mathrm{in}}$ , where the sources are supported, and the set $\Omega _{\mathrm{out}}$ , where the observations are made, are separated. As model problems we study both a quasi-linear equation and a semi-linear wave equation and show in each case that it is possible to uniquely recover the background metric up to the natural obstructions for uniqueness that is governed by finite speed of propagation for the wave equation and a gauge corresponding to change of coordinates. The proof consists of two independent components. In the geometric part of the article we introduce a novel geometrical object, the three-to-one scattering relation. We show that this relation determines uniquely the topological, differential and conformal structures of the Lorentzian manifold in a causal diamond set that is the intersection of the future of the point $p_{in}\in \Omega _{\mathrm{in}}$ and the past of the point $p_{out}\in \Omega _{\mathrm{out}}$ . In the analytic part of the article we study multiple-fold linearisation of the nonlinear wave equation using Gaussian beams. We show that the source-to-solution map, corresponding to sources in $\Omega _{\mathrm{in}}$ and observations in $\Omega _{\mathrm{out}}$ , determines the three-to-one scattering relation. The methods developed in the article do not require any assumptions on the conjugate or cut points.

We consider illumination systems and mathematical algorithms for determination of the anisotropy and topographical features of an illuminated surface from its reflection images. As a particular example we study determination of the fiber orientation of paper surface. We also consider illumination systems with multiple light sources, and introduce optimization algorithms that exploit different spectral bands of these light sources. We show that a system of three light sources, e.g., a blue, green and red LED placed in a regular triangular form, efficiently prevents distortion of the above features. It is also easy to implement in applications, e.g., of the paper industry. We furthermore show that a pentagonal illumination system would be even better. However, in this case a five-colour photographic system and the corresponding light sources would be needed.

Let M be a compact Riemannian manifold with non-empty boundary M. In this paper we consider an inverse problem for the second-order hyperbolic initial-boundary-value problem utt + but + a(x, D)u = 0 in M R+, u|MR+ = f, u|t=0 = ut|t=0 = 0. Our goal is to determine (M, g), b and a(x, D) from the knowledge of the non-stationary Dirichlet-to-Neumann map (the hyperbolic response operator) RT, with sufficiently large T 0. The response operator RT is the map , where is the normal derivative of the solution of the initial-boundary-value problem.

More specifically, we show the following.

1. (i) It is possible to determine Rt for any t 0 if we know RT for sufficiently large T and some geometric condition upon the geodesic behaviour on (M, g) is satisfied.

2. (ii) It is then possible to determine (M, g) and b uniquely and the elliptic operator a(x, D) modulo generalized gauge transformations.

In this work, we study a mesh termination scheme in acoustic scattering, known as the perfectly matched layer (PML) method. The main result of the paper is the following. Assume that the scatterer is contained in a bounded and strictly convex artificial domain. We surround this domain by a PML of constant thickness. On the peripheral boundary of this layer, a homogenous Dirichlet condition is imposed. We show in this paper that the resulting boundary-value problem for the scattered field is uniquely solvable for all wavenumbers and the solution within the artificial domain converges exponentially fast toward the full-space scattering solution when the layer thickness is increased. The proof is based on the idea of interpreting the PML medium as a complex stretching of the coordinates in Rn and on the use of complexified layer potential techniques.