A modified quasi-boundary value method for an inverse source problem of the time-fractional diffusion equation

In this paper, we consider an inverse source problem for a time-fractional diffusion equation with variable coefficients in a general bounded domain. That is to determine a space-dependent source term in the time-fractional diffusion equation from a noisy final data. Based on a series expression of the solution, we can transform the original inverse problem into a first kind integral equation. The uniqueness and a conditional stability for the space-dependent source term can be obtained. Further, we propose a modified quasi-boundary value regularization method to deal with the inverse source problem and obtain two kinds of convergence rates by using an a priori and an a posteriori regularization parameter choice rule, respectively. Numerical examples in one-dimensional and two-dimensional cases are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2013 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.