Geometry and Inverse Problems

The Banff International Research Station will host the "Geometry and Inverse Problems" workshop from September 15th to September 20th, 2013.

An outstanding inverse problem in geophysics consists in determining the inner structure of the Earth from measurements of travel times of seismic waves. From a mathematical point of view, the inner structure of the Earth is modelled by a Riemannian metric, and the travel times by the lengths of unit speed geodesics between boundary points. This gives rise to a typical geometric inverse problem: is it possible to determine a Riemannian metric from its boundary distance function? This workshop will address this and several other related open problems, including injectivity questions for ray transforms and the celebrated Calder'on problem. We will bring together an international group of renowned researchers in geometry and analysis to investigate these central questions.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).

BIRS Scientific Director, Nassif Ghoussoub
E-mail: birs-director[@]birs.ca
http://www.birs.ca/~nassif