Recovering of damping coefficients for a system of coupled wave equations with Neumann boundary conditions: Uniqueness and stability

The authors study the inverse problem of recovering damping coefficients for two coupled hyperbolic PDEs with Neumann boundary conditions by means of an additional measurement of Dirichlet boundary traces of the two solutions on a suitable, explicit subportion I"(1) of the boundary I", and over a computable time interval T > 0. Under sharp conditions on I"(0) = I"\I"(1), T > 0, the uniqueness and stability of the damping coefficients are established. The proof uses critically the Carleman estimate due to Lasiecka et al. in 2000, together with a convenient tactical route "post-Carleman estimates" suggested by Isakov in 2006.