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Section: Application Domains

Inverse problems

The research of F. Nataf on inverse problems is rather new since this activity was started from scratch in 2007. Since then, several papers were published in international journals and conference proceedings. All our numerical simulations were performed in FreeFem++.

We focus on methods related to time reversal techniques. Since the seminal paper by [M. Fink et al., Imaging through inhomogeneous media using time reversal mirrors. Ultrasonic Imaging, 13(2):199, 1991.], time reversal is a subject of very active research. The main idea is to take advantage of the reversibility of wave propagation phenomena such as it occurs in acoustics, elasticity or electromagnetism in a non-dissipative unknown medium to back-propagate signals to the sources that emitted them. Number of industrial applications have already been developped: touchscreen, medical imaging, non-destructive testing and underwater communications. The principle is to back-propagate signals to the sources that emitted them. The initial experiment, was to refocus, very precisely, a recorded signal after passing through a barrier consisting of randomly distributed metal rods. In [de Rosny and Fink. Overcoming the difraction limit in wave physics using a time-reversal mirror and a novel acoustic sink. Phys. Rev. Lett., 89 (12), 2002], the source that created the signal is time reversed in order to have a perfect time reversal experiment. Since then, numerous applications of this physical principle have been designed, see [Fink, Renversement du temps, ondes et innovation. Ed. Fayard, 2009] or for numerical experiments [Larmat et al., Time-reversal imaging of seismic sources and application to the great sumatra earthquake. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, 2006] and references therein.