Uniqueness in the Calderón problem and bilinear restriction estimates

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Abstract

Uniqueness in the Calderón problem in dimension bigger than two was usually studied under the assumption that conductivity has bounded gradient. For conductivities with unbounded gradients uniqueness results have not been known until recent years. The latest result due to Haberman basically relies on the optimal L2 restriction estimate for hypersurface which is known as the Tomas-Stein restriction theorem. In the course of developments of the Fourier restriction problem bilinear and multilinear generalizations of the (adjoint) restriction estimates under suitable transversality condition between surfaces have played important roles. Since such advanced machineries usually provide strengthened estimates, it seems natural to attempt to utilize these estimates to improve the known results. In this paper, we make use of the sharp bilinear restriction estimates, which is due to Tao, and relax the regularity assumption on conductivity. We also consider the inverse problem for the Schrödinger operator with potentials contained in the Sobolev spaces of negative orders.

Introduction

For d3, let ΩRd be a bounded domain with Lipschitz boundary, and let A(Ω) denote the set of all functions γL(Ω) satisfying γc in Ω for some c>0. Throughout the paper, we assume γA(Ω). For fH1/2(Ω) and γA(Ω), we consider the Dirichlet problem:{div(γu)=0inΩ,u=fonΩ. Let /ν denote the outward normal derivative on the boundary ∂Ω. The Dirichlet-to-Neumann map Λγ is formally defined by Λγ(f)=γufν|Ω. Since the boundary value problem (1.1) has a unique solution ufH1(Ω) (for example, see [14, Theorem 2.52]), by the trace theorem and Green's formula, the operator can be formulated in the weak sense. Precisely, for fH1/2(Ω) and gH1/2(Ω),(Λγ(f),g)=Ωγufvdx where vH1(Ω) and v|Ω=g. It is well known that Λγ is well defined and Λγ is continuous from H1/2(Ω) to H1/2(Ω).

Calderón's problem  Calderón's inverse conductivity problem concerns whether γ can be uniquely determined from Λγ, that is to say, whether the map γΛγ is injective. The problem was introduced by Calderón [9] who showed uniqueness for the linearized problem. Afterwards, numerous works have been devoted to extending the function class X(Ω)A(Ω) for which the map X(Ω)γΛγ is injective ([47]). Kohn and Vogelius [26] showed that if ∂Ω is smooth and Λγ=0 then γ vanishes to infinite order at ∂Ω provided that γC(Ω) (also, see [40]). Consequently, the mapping γΛγ is injective if we choose X(Ω) to be the space of analytic functions on Ω. Sylvester and Uhlmann in their influential work [39] proved that γ is completely determined by Λγ if γC2(Ω) for d2. They made use of the complex geometrical optics solutions which become most predominant tool not only in the Calderón problem but also in various related problems. Afterward, it has been shown that regularity on conductivity can be lowered further. The C2 regularity assumption was relaxed to C3/2+ϵ by Brown [5]. Päivärinta, Panchenko, and Uhlmann [37] showed global uniqueness of conductivities in W3/2,, and results with conductivities in W3/2,p, p>2d were obtained by Brown and Torres [7]. Nguyen and Spirn [36] obtained a result with conductivities in Ws,3/s for 3/2<s<2 when d=3. In two dimensions, the problem has different nature and uniqueness of L conductivity was established by Astala and Päivärinta [2]. Their result is an extension of the previous ones in [35], [8]. Recently, Cârstea and Wang [11] obtained uniqueness of unbounded conductivities. (See [1] and references therein for related results.) For d3, the regularity condition was remarkably improved by Haberman and Tataru [21]. By making use of Bourgain's Xs,b type spaces, they proved uniqueness when γC1(Ω), or γW1,(Ω) with the assumption that logγL(Ω) is small. This smallness assumption was later removed by Caro and Rogers [10].

As already mentioned before, for d3, most of the previous results were obtained under the assumption that γ has bounded gradient. Since the equation div(γu)=0 can be rewritten as Δu+Wu=0 with W=logγ, it naturally relates to the unique continuation problem for u satisfying |Δu|W|u|. Meanwhile, it is known that the unique continuation property holds with WLlocd [48] and generally fails if WLlocp for p<d [25]. In this regards Brown [7] proposed a conjecture that uniqueness should be valid for γW1,d(Ω), but no counterexample which shows the optimality of this conjecture has been known yet. Recently, Brown's conjecture was verified by Haberman [19] for d=3,4, and he also showed that uniqueness remains valid even if ∇γ is unbounded when d=5,6. More precisely, he showed that γΛγ is injective if γ belongs to Ws,p(Ω) with dp and s=1 for d=3,4, and dp< and s=1+d42p for d=5,6.

For a given function q, let Mq be the multiplication operator fqf and let Od be the orthonormal group in Rd. Most important part of the argument in Haberman [19] ([21]) is to show that there are sequences {Uj} in Od and {τj} in (0,) such thatlimjM(f)UjXζ(τj)1/2Xζ(τj)1/2=0 and τj as j. We refer the reader forward to Section 2 for the definition of the spaces Xζ(τ)1/2 and Xζ(τ)1/2. If fLd2 and has compact support, it is not difficult to show limτMfXζ(τ)1/2Xζ(τ)1/2=0, see Remark 5. However, MfXζ(τ)1/2Xζ(τ)1/2 does not behave as nicely as MfXζ(τ)1/2Xζ(τ)1/2. This is also related to the failure of the Carleman estimate of the form evxuLqCevxΔuLp when d3. See [24], [3], [48], [22]. To get around the difficulty averaged estimates over Od and τ were considered ([21], [36], [19]). In view of Wolff's work [48] it still seems plausible to expect (1.2) or its variant holds with fLlocd.

Restriction estimate  Let SRd1 1 be a smooth compact hypersurface with nonvanishing Gaussian curvature and let be the surface measure on S. The estimate fˆ|SL2(dμ)fLr(Rd1), r2d/(d+2) is known as the Stein-Tomas theorem. The range of r is optimal since the estimate fails if r>2d/(d+2). The restriction estimate can be rewritten in its adjoint form:fdμˆLq(Rd1)C(d,p,q,S)fLp(S,dμ). The restriction conjecture is to determine (p,q) for which (1.3) holds. Even for most typical surfaces such as the sphere and the paraboloid, the conjecture is left open when d4. We refer the reader to [17], [18] for the most recent progress. There have been bilinear and multilinear generalizations of the linear estimate (1.3) under additional transversality conditions between surfaces ([43], [41], [4]), and these estimates played important roles in development of the restriction problem. To be precise, let S1,S2S be hypersurfaces in Rd1 and let dμ1, dμ2 be the surface measures on S1, S2, respectively. The following form of estimate is called bilinear (adjoint) restriction estimate:fdμ1ˆgdμ2ˆLq/2(Rd1)CfL2(S1,dμ1)gL2(S2,dμ2). Under certain condition between S1 and S2 the estimate (1.4) remains valid for some q<2dd2 with which (1.3) fails if p=2. (See Theorem 2.5 and [42], [29] for detailed discussion.)

By duality, in order to get estimate for MfXζ(τ)1/2Xζ(τ)1/2, we consider the bilinear operator Bf which is given byXζ(τ)1/2×Xζ(τ)1/2(u,v)Bf(u,v)=fu,v. Compared with the previous results the main new input in [19] was the L2-Fourier restriction theorem for the sphere which is due to Tomas [45] and Stein [38] (Theorem 2.3). This is natural in that the multiplier which defines Xζ(τ)1/2 has mass concentrated near the surface Στ given by (2.1) while the restriction estimate provides estimates for functions of which Fourier transform concentrates near hypersurface. The use of the bilinear restriction estimate instead of the linear one has a couple of obvious advantages. The bilinear restriction estimate not only has a wider range of boundedness but also naturally fits with the bilinear operator Bf.

In this paper we aim to improve Haberman's results by making use of the bilinear restriction estimate (1.4) for the elliptic surfaces (see Definition 2.2 and Theorem 2.5). However, the bilinear estimates outside of the range of the L2 restriction estimate are only true under the extra separation condition between the supports of Fourier transforms of the functions (see Corollary 2.6). Such estimates cannot be put in use directly. This leads to considerable technical involvement. The following is our main result.

Theorem 1.1

Let d=5,6 and Ω be a bounded domain with Lipschitz boundary. Then the map γΛγ is injective if γWs,p(Ω)A(Ω) for s>sd(p), wheresd(p)={1+d52pifd+1p<,1+d25d+6p2p(d1)ifdp<d+1. Here, Ws,p(Ω) is the Sobolev-Slobodeckij space (cf. Fig. 1).

In particular, uniqueness holds for γWs,5(Ω)A(Ω) if d=5 and s>4140, and for γWs,6(Ω)A(Ω) if d=6 and s>1110. Since Wsd(p)+ϵ,p↪̸W1, if ϵ>0 is small enough, this result is not covered by the result in [10].

Even though our estimates are stronger than those in [19], the estimates do not immediately yield improved results in every dimension. As is to be seen later in the paper, our estimates for the low frequency part are especially improved but this is not the case for the high frequency part since we rely on the argument based on the properties of Xζb spaces ([21], [19]).

The argument based on the complex geometrical optics solutions shows that the Fourier transforms of qi=γi1/2Δγi1/2, i=1,2, are identical as long as Λγ1=Λγ2. As was indicated in [19] this approach has a drawback when we deal with less regular conductivity. In order to use the Fourier transform one has to extend γ1γ2W0s,p(Ω) to the whole space Rd such that γ1γ2=0 on Ωc. Such extension is possible by exploiting the trace theorem ([30, Theorem 1]) but only under the condition s1p1. This additional restriction allows new results only for d=5,6 in Theorem 1.1.2 The same was also true with the result in [19]. However, as is mentioned in [19], if we additionally impose the condition γ1/ν=γ2/ν on the boundary ∂Ω, then Theorem 1.1 can be extended to higher dimensions d7. In fact, by [30, Theorem 1], the restriction s1p1 can be relaxed so that s1p2, which is valid for s>sd(p) for d7 and pd. See Remark 4 for the value of sd(p). However, the additional condition on the boundary is not known to be true under the assumption Λγ1=Λγ2 for γ1,γ2 as in Theorem 1.1. (In [7] Brown and Torres proved that if Λγ1=Λγ2, then γ1/ν=γ2/ν on ∂Ω for γ1,γ2W3/2,p, p>2d, and d3.)

If we had the endpoint bilinear restriction estimate (i.e., the estimate (1.4) with q=2(d+1)d1, see Remark 1), the argument in this paper would allow us to obtain the uniqueness result with s=1 and p6 when d=5, and with s=1+1/p and p8 when d=7. Unfortunately the endpoint bilinear restriction estimate is still left open.

Inverse problem for the Schrödinger operator  For d3, let ΩRd be a bounded domain with C boundary. We now consider the Dirichlet problem:{Δuqu=0 in Ω,u=f on Ω.

Let us setHcs,p(Ω)={qHs,p(Rd):suppqΩ}. Here Hs,p is the Bessel potential space, see Notations for its definition. Since Hs,p is defined by Fourier multipliers, the space is more convenient for dealing with various operators which are defined by Fourier transform. If we disregard ϵ–loss of the regularity, the spaces Hs,p and Ws,p are essentially equivalent because Ws1,pHs2,p and Hs1,pWs2,p provided s1>s2. (See [46, Section 2.3] for more details.) Thus, the statement of Theorem 1.2 does not change if Hs,p is replaced by Ws,p.

Let qHcs,p(Ω) with s,p satisfying (1.8). We assume that zero is not a Dirichlet eigenvalue of Δq. Then, by the standard argument ([31]) we see that there is a unique solution ufH1(Ω) for every fH12(Ω). In fact, this can be shown by a slight modification of the argument in [27, Appendix A] (also see the proof of Lemma 6.4 where quvdx is controlled while qHcs,p(Ω) and u,vH1(Ω)).

For qHcs,p(Ω) let Lq denote the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map given by(Lqf,g)=Ωuv+quvdx, where u is the unique solution to (1.6) and vH1(Ω) with v|Ω=g. As in the Calderón problem, one may ask whether qLq is injective. As is well known the problem is closely related to the Calderón problem. In fact, the Calderón problem can be reduced to the inverse problem for Δq with q=γ1/2Δγ1/2 (see [39]). The problem of injectivity of qLq was originally considered with qHc0,p(Ω), but it is not difficult to see that we may consider q1,q2Hcs,p(Ω) with s<0. (See, for example, Brown-Torres [7].) Since u, vH1(Ω), it is natural to impose s1. In fact, Lqf is well defined provided that qHcs,p(Ω) withmax{2+dp,1}s. The standard argument shows that Lq:H12(Ω)H12(Ω) is continuous.

The injectivity of the mappingHcs,p(Ω)qLq was shown with s=0, p= by Sylvester and Uhlmann [39]. The result was extended to include unbounded potential qLd2+ϵ by Jerison and Kenig (see Chanillo [12]). The injectivity for q contained in the Fefferman-Phong class with small norm was shown by Chanillo [12] and the result for qLd2 was announced by Lavine and Nachman in [34].3 Their result was recently extended to compact Riemannian manifolds by Dos Santos Ferreira, Kenig, and Salo [13]. Also see [27] for extensions to the polyharmonic operators.

The regularity requirement for q can be relaxed. Results in this direction were obtained by Brown [5], Päivärinta, Panchenko, and Uhlmann [37], Brown and Torres [7] in connection with the Calderón problem. Those results can be improved to less regular q. In fact, Haberman's result implies that the injectivity holds with qH1,d when d=3,4 (see [20]). It seems natural to conjecture that the same is true in any higher dimensions. Interpolating this conjecture with the result due to Lavine and Nachman [34] (qLd2) leads to the following:

Conjecture 1

Let d/2p<, and Ω be a bounded domain with Lipschitz boundary. Suppose q1,q2Hcs,p(Ω) and Lq1=Lq2. If ssd(p):=max{1,2+dp}, then q1=q2.

We define rd:[d2,)R. For 3d6, setrd(p)={1+d52pif pd+1,32+d2pif d+1>p4,2+dpif 4>pd2, and, for d7, setrd(p)={1+d52pif pd+92,32+3d14pif d+92>p3d+76,127+6d7pif 3d+76>pd2.

The following is a partial result concerning Conjecture 1 when d5.

Theorem 1.2

Let d3 and d/2p<. The mapping (1.9) is injective if s>max{1,rd(p)}.

When d=5, Theorem 1.2 shows that s>sd(p) for d2p<4 or pd+1, where Conjecture 1 is verified except for the critical case s=sd(p). Similarly, when d=6 injectivity of (1.9) holds if s>sd(p) and d2p<4. We illustrate our result in Fig. 2.

Organization of the paper  In Section 2, we recall basic properties of the spaces Xζb, and obtain estimates which rely on L2 linear and L2 bilinear restriction estimates. In Section 3 which is the most technical part of the paper, we make use of the bilinear restriction estimates and a Whitney type decomposition to get the crucial estimates while carefully considering orthogonality among the decomposed pieces. In Section 4 we take average of the estimates from Section 3 over dilation and rotation, which allows us to exploit extra cancellation due to frequency localization. Combining the previous estimates together we prove key estimates in Section 5. We prove Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2 in Section 6.

Notations  We list notations which are used throughout the paper.

  • For A,B>0 we write AB if ACB with some constant C>0. We also use the notation AB if AB and BA.

  • The orthogonal group in Rd is denoted by Od.

  • Let τ>0. For a function f:RdC and a matrix UOd we define fτU(x):=τdf(τ1Ux). If U is the identity matrix, we denote fτU by fτ.

  • The Fourier and inverse Fourier transforms: For an integrable function u:RkC, we write Fu(ξ)=uˆ(ξ)=Rkeixξu(x)dx and F1u(ξ)=(2π)kFu(ξ).

  • For a measurable function a with polynomial growth, let a(D)f=F1(aFf).

  • For ERk and xRk, we write dist(x,E)=inf{|xy|:yE}.

  • For ERk and δ>0, we denote by E+O(δ) the δ-neighborhood of E in Rk, i.e., E+O(δ)={xRk:dist(x,E)<δ}.

  • We set Sk1={xRk:|x|=1}. Also, for aRk and r>0, Bk(a,r)={xRk:|xa|<r}.

  • If e1 and e2 are a pair of orthonormal vectors in Rd, we write ξ1=ξe1, ξ2=ξe2.

  • For ξRd we sometimes write ξ=(ξ1,ξ˜)R×Rd1, ξ=(ξ1,ξ2,ξ¯)R×R×Rd2.

  • For s0 and p[1,], we denote by Hs,p the Bessel potential space {φS:(1+|D|2)s2φLp} which is endowed with the norm φHs,p=(1+|D|2)s2φLp.

  • For s<0 and p(1,), we denote by Hs,p(Ω), p=pp1, the dual space of H0s,p(Ω).

  • We use , and (,) to denote the inner product and the bilinear pairing between distribution and function, respectively.

Section snippets

Xζb spaces and L2 linear and bilinear restriction estimates

In this section, we recall basic properties of the Xζb spaces and linear and bilinear restriction estimates, which are to be used later.

Bilinear Xζ(1),1/τ1/2 estimates

As mentioned in the introduction, we regard (f)u,v as a bilinear operator and attempt to obtain estimates while u,vXζ(τ)1/2. In order to make use of the restriction estimates and its variants we work in frequency local setting after rescaling ξτξ. This enables us to deal with Σ1 instead of Στ which varies along τ. In this section we use the estimates in the previous section to obtain estimates for (f)u,v in terms of Xζ(1),1/τ1/2.

Average over rotation and dilation

In this section, we consider the average of Ap(f,τλ,τ1Ue) over UOd and τ[1,2]. The projection operators engaged in the definition of Ap(f,τλ,τ1Ue) break the Fourier support of f into small pieces. Average over UOd and τ[1,2] makes it possible to exploit such smallness of Fourier supports. This gives considerably better bounds which are not viable when one attempts to control Ap(f,λ,e) for a fixed e with PλfLp.

For an invertible d×d matrix U, let us define the projection operator (Pk,kj,±

Key estimates: asymptotically vanishing averages

In this section, we assemble the various estimates in the previous sections and obtain the estimates that are the key ingredients for the proofs of Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2.

Proposition 5.1

Let 0κ1, τ1, d2κp<, and let gLp(Rd) with suppgBd(0,τ). Suppose (3.47) holds. Then, we haveMmτκ(D)gXζ(1),1/τ1/2Xζ(1),1/τ1/2τ2κdpgLp+1τλ1:dyadicλντμAp(g,λ,e1).

Therefore, by Proposition 3.8, the estimate (5.1) holds provided that d3, 0κ1, max{d+12,d2κ}p<, ν=κ2p, and μ>βd(p). Moreover, when 3d8

Proof of Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2

Once we have the key estimates in the previous sections, we can prove Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2 following the argument in [19], which also relies on the basic strategy due to Sylvester-Uhlmann [39], and subsequent modifications due to Haberman-Tataru [21] and Nguyen-Spirn [36]. We begin with recalling several basic theorems which we need in what follows.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by NRF-2017R1C1B2002959 (S. Ham), a KIAS Individual Grant (MG073702) at Korea Institute for Advanced Study, NRF-2020R1F1A1A0107352012 (Y. Kwon), and NRF-2021R1A2B5B02001786 (S. Lee).

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