Boundary rigidity with partial data

Abstract

We study the boundary rigidity problem with partial data consisting of determining locally the Riemannian metric of a Riemannian manifold with boundary from the distance function measured at pairs of points near a fixed point on the boundary. We show that one can recover uniquely and in a stable way a conformal factor near a strictly convex point where we have the information. In particular, this implies that we can determine locally the isotropic sound speed of a medium by measuring the travel times of waves joining points close to a convex point on the boundary. The local results lead to a global lens rigidity uniqueness and stability result assuming that the manifold is foliated by strictly convex hypersurfaces.