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University of Cambridge

The Calderón problem for connections

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This thesis is concerned with the inverse problem of determining a unitary connection $A$ on a Hermitian vector bundle $E$ of rank $m$ over a compact Riemannian manifold $(M, g)$ from the Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DN) map \LambdaA of the associated connection Laplacian dA*dA. The connection is to be determined up to a unitary gauge equivalence equal to the identity at the boundary. In our first approach to the problem, we restrict our attention to conformally transversally anisotropic (cylindrical) manifolds M \Subset \mathbb{R}\times M0. Our strategy can be described as follows: we construct the special Complex Geometric Optics solutions oscillating in the vertical direction, that concentrate near geodesics and use their density in an integral identity to reduce the problem to a suitable $X$-ray transform on M0. The construction is based on our proof of existence of Gaussian Beams on M0, which are a family of smooth approximate solutions to dA*dAu = 0 depending on a parameter $\tau \in \mathbb{R}$, bounded in L2 norm and concentrating in measure along geodesics when $\tau \to \infty$, whereas the small remainder (that makes the solution exact) can be shown to exist by using suitable Carleman estimates. In the case $m = 1$, we prove the recovery of the connection given the injectivity of the $X$-ray transform on $0$ and $1$-forms on M0. For $m > 1$ and M0 simple we reduce the problem to a certain two dimensional new non-abelian ray transform. In our second approach, we assume that the connection $A$ is a Yang-Mills connection and no additional assumption on $M$. We construct a global gauge for $A$ (possibly singular at some points) that ties well with the DN map and in which the Yang-Mills equations become elliptic. By using the unique continuation property for elliptic systems and the fact that the singular set is suitably small, we are able to propagate the gauges globally. For the case $m = 1$ we are able to reconstruct the connection, whereas for $m > 1$ we are forced to make the technical assumption that $(M, g)$ is analytic in order to prove the recovery. Finally, in both approaches we are using the vital fact that is proved in this work: \LambdaA is a pseudodifferential operator of order $1$ acting on sections of E|\partial M, whose full symbol determines the full Taylor expansion of $A$ at the boundary.

Degree

thesis:*
Name dc:type.qualificationname
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral
Grantor dc:publisher.institution
University of Cambridge
Year dc:date.issued
2017

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Cekić, Mihajlo
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Paternain, Gabriel

Subjects

dc:subject × 14

Rights

dc:rights
Language dc:language
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
DOI dc:identifier.doi
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.13753
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/267829

Chain of custody

source
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Cambridge University
Base URL
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Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
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citation

Cekić, Mihajlo. The Calderón problem for connections. Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.13753