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Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order and a space source term in an

anomalous diffusion model

Article  in  Journal of Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems · July 2022

DOI: 10.1515/jiip-2021-0027

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 J. Inverse Ill-Posed Probl. 2022; aop

Research Article

Liangliang Sun*, Xiongbin Yan and Kaifang Liao

Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

and a space source term in
an anomalous diffusion model
https://doi.org/10.1515/jiip-2021-0027
Received May 6, 2021; revised November 9, 2021; accepted June 12, 2022

Abstract: This paper is devoted to recovering simultaneously the fractional order and the space-dependent
source term from partial Cauchy’s boundary data in a multidimensional time-fractional diffusion equation.
The uniqueness of the inverse problem is obtained by employing analytic continuation and the Laplace
transform. Then a modified non-stationary iterative Tikhonov regularization method with a regularization
parameter chosen by a sigmoid-type function is used to find a stable approximate solution for the source
term and the fractional order. Numerical examples in one-dimensional and two-dimensional cases are pro-
vided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Determination of fractional order, inverse source problem, fractional diffusion equation,
uniqueness, modified non-stationary iterative Tikhonov regularization method

MSC 2010: 65M32, 35R11, 35R30

1 Introduction
In this paper, we are concerned with an anomalous diffusion model with time fractional derivative. Let T be
a fixed constant and let Ω be a bounded domain in ℝd with sufficient smooth boundary ∂Ω. Consider the
following initial boundary value problem (IBVP) for time fractional diffusion equation:

{ ∂ αt u(x, t) + Au(x, t) = f(x)r(t), (x, t) ∈ Ω T := Ω × (0, T],

{
{
{ u(x, 0) = ϕ(x), x ∈ Ω,̄
{ (1.1)
{
{
{ ∂u
{ (x, t) = 0, (x, t) ∈ ∂Ω × (0, T],
∂n
where α ∈ (0, 1), ∂ αt denotes the Caputo fractional left derivative of order α with respect to t defined by
t
1 ∂u(x, s) ds
∂ αt u(x, t) = ∫ , t > 0,
Γ(1 − α) ∂s (t − s)α
0

n is the unitary outer normal vector of ∂Ω and A is a symmetric uniformly elliptic operator defined by
d
∂ ∂u
Au(x, t) = − ∑ (a ij (x) (x, t)) + c(x)u(x, t),
i,j=1
∂x i ∂x j

*Corresponding author: Liangliang Sun, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070,
P. R. China, e-mail: sunll0321@163.com
Xiongbin Yan, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, P. R. China,
e-mail: yanxb2015@163.com
Kaifang Liao, College of Applied Mathematics, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu 610225, P. R. China,
e-mail: liaokf16@126.com
2 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

where a ij ∈ C1 (Ω), ̄ a ij = a ji , c ∈ C(Ω),

̄ c(x) > 0 on Ω,̄ and ∑d a ij (x)ξ i ξ j ≥ ν|ξ|2 for some ν > 0, all x ∈ Ω̄ and
i,j=1
all ξ = (ξ1 , . . . , ξ d ) ∈ ℝd . At the macroscopic level, time fractional diffusion equation (1.1) can capture the
anomalous diffusion processes well [1, 14, 21, 22], especially the subdiffusion process. Anomalous diffusion
is often observed in materials with memory, e.g., viscoelastic materials, and heterogeneous media, such as
soil, heterogeneous aquifer, and underground fluid flow, and so on [13, 14, 18, 31, 32]. At the microscopic
level, it can be described by the continuous time random walk [15], where the waiting time of particle jumps
follows some heavy tailed distribution.
Our main purpose is to establish the uniqueness in simultaneously identifying the fractional order and
a space-dependent source term for IBVP (1.1) from the partial Cauchy data, and to construct a pair (α, f) from
the noisy measurements.

(IP). Given r(t), ϕ(x) and the operator A, can we find a pair (α, f(x)) such that the solution u for IBVP (1.1)
satisfies
u(x, t)|Γ×(0,T] = g(x, t),
where Γ is a nonempty open subset of Ω.

In recent years, there has been significant progress in determining the source problem for time fractional
diffusion equations. Zhang and Xu [33] proved the uniqueness of inverse a space-dependent source func-
tion by the Cauchy data and provided an efficient numerical method in the one-dimensional case. Wei et al.
[28, 29] established the uniqueness and a stability estimate for an inverse time/space-dependent source prob-
lem by the boundary Cauchy data in the multidimensional case. In [20], Sakamoto and Yamamoto obtained
a stability estimate for identifying a time-dependent source from the measurements in an interior point of
a domain. Jiang, Li Liu and Yamamoto [6] established a weak unique continuation property and studied an
inverse space-dependent source problem by interior measurements. There are also abundant mature numer-
ical methods and/or regularization methods [11, 25–27, 30, 34] on the inverse source problems at present,
e.g., the reproducing kernel method, the Fourier truncation method, the Tikhonov regularization method,
the quasi boundary value method, quasi-reversibility method and fixed point iterative method, etc.
All the above studies only consider the single parameter identification problem of the source term. How-
ever, the fractional order is always unknown for an anomalous diffusion model, so it is more meaningful
to consider the problem of multi-parameter inversion in a fractional order diffusion equation. In 2013, Li,
Zhang, Jia and Yamamoto [9] used a modified optimal perturbation algorithm to deal with simultaneously
recovering the fractional order and diffusion coefficient for the time-fractional diffusion equation. Recently,
Sun et al. in [23, 24] studied simultaneous inversion of the potential function and the fractional orders
from the noisy boundary Cauchy data for a single-term and a multi-term time-fractional diffusion equations,
respectively. Janno and Kinash [5] studied the simultaneous reconstruction of the fractional order and space-
dependent source term in a fractional diffusion equation from final time measured data. Li and Zhang [10]
studied an inverse problem for simultaneous restoration of the fractional order and the source term from the
sparse boundary measurements, and proved the uniqueness of the inverse problem but no numerical inver-
sion. Ruan, Zhang and Wang [19] considered a simultaneous identification of fractional order and space
dependent source term by two different kinds of observation data for one- and two-dimensional cases. To the
authors’ best knowledge, except for the above literatures, the published works concerning this issue is still
scarce although it is very important. As we known, however, the nonlocal integral observation and the final
time data used in above papers are difficult to measure or costly to measure in an engineering application.
In this paper, we focus on an simultaneously inverse fractional order and space-dependent source prob-
lem of (1.1) by the partial Cauchy’s data in a general domain. Compared with the published works on the
inverse source problems, we obtain the uniqueness of inverse space-dependent source in case of an unknown
fractional order, theoretically. We firstly prove the uniqueness of the inverse fractional order by using the
asymptotic expansion of the Mittag-Leffler function and the consistency estimation of solutions. Then we
study the uniqueness of inverse source problem. In terms of proof techniques, we first adopt Titchmarsh’s
convolution theorem to overcome the analytic continuation problem. The uniqueness result is then obtained
by employing analytic continuation and the Laplace transform. Finally, we use the modified non-stationary
iterative Tikhonov regularization method with a regularization parameter chosen by a sigmoid-type function
 L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order | 3

to simultaneously construct a stable approximate solution of the source term and the fractional order, numer-
ically. One of our contributions is the uniqueness for simultaneously determining the fractional order and
space-dependent source term for a multidimensional time fractional diffusion equation by the partial Cauchy
data with limited observation time. This is an extension and improvement of our early work in [29], which
deals with an inverse space-dependent source problem by the boundary data with infinite observation time.
The other contribution is that we successfully recover the space-dependent source term and the fractional
order from a time trace of the solution in the one and two dimensional cases by the modified non-stationary
iterative Tikhonov regularization method with a regularization parameter chosen by a sigmoid-type function.
The main result in this paper is the following conclusion.

Theorem 1.1. Assume that ϕ ∈ D(A μ ) for μ > 2d+5 4 and Aϕ|∂Ω ≠ 0, f i ∈ D(A ) for γ > 4 , 0 < α i < 1, i = 1, 2,
γ 2d+1
󸀠
and r ∈ C[0, T] with r(0) = 0 and r (0) ≠ 0. Suppose that u i (x, t) is the solution of (1.1) with respect to f = f i
and α = α i , i = 1, 2. Then u1 (x, t) = u2 (x, t) for (x, t) ∈ Γ × (0, T] implies α1 = α2 and f1 (x) = f2 (x) in L2 (Ω).

This paper is composed as follows. In Section 2, we obtain the uniqueness for inverse the fractional order and
the space-dependent source term problem. In Section 3, we present the modified non-stationary iterative
Tikhonov regularization method for solving the inverse problem. Numerical results for three examples in
one-dimensional case and for one example in two-dimensional case are investigated in Section 4. Finally,
concluding remarks are given in Section 5.

2 Uniqueness for the inverse problem

Firstly we give the following preliminaries (refer to [7]).

Definition 2.1. The Mittag-Leffler function is

∞
zk
E α,β (z) = ∑ , z ∈ ℂ,
k=0
Γ(αk + β)

where α > 0 and β ∈ ℝ are arbitrary constants.

Proposition 2.2. Let 0 < α < 2 and β ∈ ℝ be arbitrary. We suppose that μ is such that πα
2 < μ < min{π, πα}.
Then there exists a constant c = c(α, β, μ) > 0 such that
c
|E α,β (z)| ≤ , μ ≤ |arg(z)| ≤ π.
1 + |z|
Lemma 2.3. Assume r ∈ L∞ (0, T) and denote
t

R n (t) = ∫ r(s)(t − s)α−1 E α,α (−λ n (t − s)α ) ds, t ∈ (0, T], n = 1, 2, . . . .

0

Then R n (t) ∈ C[0, T].

Proof. Let e n (t) = t α−1 E α,α (−λ n t α ). Then R n (t) = r ∗ e n (t). It is easy to obtain ‖e n ‖L1 (0,T) = λ1n (1 − E α,1 (−λ n T α ))
from the formula dt d
E α,1 (−λt α ) = −λt α−1 E α,α (−λt α ). Therefore, we arrive at e n ∈ L1 (0, T). Using the Young
theorem, we obtain R n (t) ∈ C[0, T].

Now we introduce the definition of the Hilbert scale space that will used in the later.
We denote the eigensystem of the operator A with homogeneous Neumann boundary condition as
{λ n , φ n }∞ ∞
n=1 , namely Aφ n = λ n φ n . Then we have 0 < λ 1 ≤ λ 2 ≤ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ and {φ n }n=1 forms an orthonormal basis
in L (Ω). Thus, we can define the operator A in H (Ω) equipped with the Neumann boundary condition by
2 2

∂u
D(A) := {u ∈ H 2 (Ω) : = 0 on ∂Ω}.
∂n
4 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

Denoting by ( ⋅ , ⋅ ) the scalar product in L2 (Ω), we can define a fractional power A γ of A with γ ≥ 0 by
∞
2γ
D(A γ ) = {ψ ∈ L2 (Ω) : ∑ λ n |(ψ, φ n )|2 < ∞}
n=1

equipped with the norm

1
∞ 2
2γ
‖ψ‖D(A γ ) = { ∑ λ n |(ψ, φ n )| } .
2

n=1

Now we give a well-posedness result of the forward problem (1.1).

Lemma 2.4 ([20]). The following statements hold:

(i) Let ϕ ∈ L2 (Ω) and f(x)r(t) = 0. There exists a unique weak solution u ∈ C([0, T]; L2 (Ω)) ∩ C((0, T]; D(A))
to (1.1) such that ∂ αt u ∈ C((0, T]; L2 (Ω)). Moreover, we have
∞
u(x, t) = ∑ (ϕ, φ n )E α,1 (−λ n t α )φ n (x).
n=1

(ii) Let ϕ = 0, r ∈ L∞ (0, T) and f ∈ L2 (Ω). There exists a unique weak solution u ∈ L2 (0, T; D(A)) to (1.1) such
that ∂ αt u ∈ L2 (Ω × (0, T)). Moreover, we have

∞ t

u(x, t) = ∑ ∫ r(s)(t − s)α−1 E α,α (−λ n (t − s)α ) ds(f, φ n )φ n (x).

n=1 0

Now we give the proof of the uniqueness of the inverse problem stated in the introduction.

Proof of Theorem 1.1. Firstly, we will prove the uniqueness of the fractional order. Based on Lemma 2.4, the
expressions u1 (x, t) and u2 (x, t) are given by
∞ ∞
u i (x, t) = ∑ E α i ,1 (−λ n t α i )ϕ n φ n (x) + ∑ R i,n (t)f i,n φ n (x), i = 1, 2,
n=1 n=1
t
where ϕ n = (ϕ, φ n ), f i,n = (f i , φ n ) and R i,n (t) = ∫0 r(s)(t − s)α i −1 E α i ,α i (−λ n (t − s)α i ) ds.
Next we prove the uniform convergence of above series. By the Sobolev embedding theorem, we have
‖φ n ‖C(Ω)̄ ≤ C‖φ n ‖H 2m (Ω) for m ≥ 4d , and D(A m ) embedding continuously into H 2m (Ω) for m > 0 deduces
‖φ n ‖H 2m (Ω) ≤ Cλ m
n . Let t 0 > 0 be a sufficiently small and fixed constant. For t ∈ [t 0 , T], by Proposition 2.2,
combining the above discussion and the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, we arrive at
∞ ∞
C ∞ ∞
∑ max |E α,1 (−λ n t α )ϕ n φ n (x)| + ∑ max |R n (t)f n φ n (x)| ≤ α ∑ |ϕ n |λ n
m−1
+ C‖r‖∞ ∑ |f n |λ m−1
n
̄ ̄ t0 n=1
n=1 x∈Ω n=1 x∈Ω n=1
1
∞ 2
2(m−1−γ)
≤ C( ∑ λn ) (‖ϕ‖D(A γ ) + ‖f‖D(A γ ) ).
n=1
2
By the book [2], we know that λ n ≥ Cn d , n ∈ ℕ. If we choose γ > m + 4d − 1, i.e., γ > 2d − 1, then the first
series of the last term is convergent. By ϕ, f ∈ D(A γ ), we know that above series is convergent on Ω̄ × [t0 , ∞)
uniformly. By Lemma 2.3, we obtain u(x, t) ∈ C(Ω̄ × [t0 , T]). Therefore, the condition u1 (x, t) = u2 (x, t) for
(x, t) ∈ Γ × (0, T] gives
∞ ∞
∑ E α1 ,1 (−λ n t α1 )ϕ n φ n (x) + ∑ R1,n (t)f1,n φ n (x)
n=1 n=1
∞ ∞
(2.1)
= ∑ E α2 ,1 (−λ n t )ϕ n φ n (x) + ∑ R2,n (t)f2,n φ n (x),
α2
x ∈ Γ, 0 < t ≤ T.
n=1 n=1

By the definition of the Mittag-Leffler function, we have

λn tα
E α,1 (−λ n t α ) = 1 − + t2α λ2n E α,2α+1 (−λ n t α ).
Γ(α + 1)
 L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order | 5

Combing the mean value theorem for integrals, we have

r(ξ(t; α)) tα
R n (t) = (1 − E α,1 (−λ n t α )) = r(ξ(t; α)){ − t2α λ n E α,2α+1 (−λ n t α )}.
λn Γ(α + 1)
It is obvious that 0 < ξ(t; α) < t, so we have

lim ξ(t; α) = 0. (2.2)

t→0

Substituting them into (2.1), we arrive at

∞ ∞ ∞
t α1
∑ ϕ n φ n (x) − ∑ λ n ϕ n φ n (x) + t2α1 ∑ λ2n E α1 ,2α1 +1 (−λ n t α1 )ϕ n φ n (x)
n=1
Γ(α1 + 1) n=1 n=1
t α1 r(ξ(t; α1 )) ∞ ∞
+ ∑ f1,n φ n (x) − t2α1 r(ξ(t; α1 )) ∑ λ n E α1 ,2α1 +1 (−λ n t α1 )f1,n φ n (x)
Γ(α1 + 1) n=1 n=1
∞ ∞ ∞
(2.3)
t α2
= ∑ ϕ n φ n (x) − ∑ λ n ϕ n φ n (x) + t2α2 ∑ λ2n E α2 ,2α2 +1 (−λ n t α2 )ϕ n φ n (x)
n=1
Γ(α2 + 1) n=1 n=1
t α2 r(ξ(t; α2 )) ∞ ∞
+ ∑ f2,n φ n (x) − t2α2 r(ξ(t; α2 )) ∑ λ n E α2 ,2α2 +1 (−λ n t α2 )f2,n φ n (x).
Γ(α2 + 1) n=1 n=1

As
∞ ∞
∑ max |ϕ n φ n (x)| ≤ ∑ λ m
n |ϕ n | ≤ C‖ϕ‖D(A γ ) (2.4)
̄
n=1 x∈Ω n=1

for γ > 2d , so ∑∞
n=1 ϕ n φ n (x) = ϕ(x) for x ∈ Γ and the first term of both sides in the above equation can be
vanished. Similarly, we have by the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality
∞ ∞
∑ max |λ n ϕ n φ n (x)| ≤ ∑ λ m+1
n |ϕ n | ≤ C‖ϕ‖D(A γ )
̄
n=1 x∈Ω n=1

for γ > d
2 + 1. So we have
∞
∑ λ n ϕ n φ n (x) = Aϕ(x), x ∈ Γ.
n=1

Meanwhile, it is not difficult to prove that

1− αϵ
λ n i t α i −ϵ
sup <∞
n∈ℕ,t≥0 1 + λ n t i
α

with sufficiently small ϵ such that 0 < ϵ < 1

4 min{α1 , α2 }, i = 1, 2. So we have

∞ ∞ 1− αϵ
α1 +ϵ
m+1+ αϵ λ n 1 t α1 −ϵ
t 2α1
∑ max |λ2n E α1 ,2α1 +1 (−λ n t α1 )ϕ n φ n (x)| ≤ Ct ∑ λn 1
|ϕ n | ≤ Ct α1 +ϵ ‖ϕ‖D(A γ )
n=1 x∈Ω̄ n=1
1 + λ n t α1

for γ > 2d + 45 .
Regarding the fourth and fifth terms on the both sides of equation (2.3), we have the following estimates:

t α r(ξ(t; α)) ∞ t α r(ξ(t; α)) ∞ m t α r(ξ(t; α))

∑ max |f n φ n (x)| ≤ ∑ λ n |f n | ≤ C‖f‖D(A γ )
Γ(α + 1) n=1 x∈Ω̄ Γ(α + 1) n=1 Γ(α + 1)

for γ > d
2 and
∞ ∞ 1− ϵ
m+ αϵ λ n α t α−ϵ
t2α r(ξ(t; α)) ∑ max |λ n E α,2α+1 (−λ n t α )f n φ n (x)| ≤ Ct α+ϵ r(ξ(t; α)) ∑ λ n |f n |
n=1 x∈Ω
̄
n=1
1 + λn tα
≤ Ct α+ϵ r(ξ(t; α))‖f‖D(A γ )

for γ > d
2 + 41 .
6 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

As r(0) = 0, combining (2.2) and ϕ ∈ D(A μ ) with μ > d

2 + 5
4 and f1 , f2 ∈ D(A γ ) with γ > d
2 + 14 , when t
tends to zero, we can rewrite (2.3) as follows:
t α1
Aϕ(x) + O(t α1 +ϵ ) + o(t α1 ) + o(t α1 +ϵ )
Γ(α1 + 1)
t α2
= Aϕ(x) + O(t α2 +ϵ ) + o(t α2 ) + o(t α2 +ϵ ), x∈Γ as t → 0.
Γ(α2 + 1)
We use proof by contradiction. Let α1 > α2 . Then dividing by t α2 yields Γ(α12 +1) Aϕ(x) = 0. This is impossible
since Aϕ|∂Ω ≠ 0. Similarly, α2 > α1 is also impossible. Therefore, α1 = α2 .
Secondly, we will deduce the uniqueness of source f(x) in the sense of L2 (Ω). As α1 = α2 , so (2.1) turns
into
t ∞
∫ r(s) ∑ (t − s)α−1 E α,α (−λ n (t − s)α )(f1,n − f2,n )φ n (x) ds = 0, x ∈ Γ, 0 < t ≤ T.
0 n=1

Using Titchmarsh’s convolution theorem, it follows from the conditions of r that

∞ ∞
∑ t α−1 E α,α (−λ n t α )f1,n φ n (x) = ∑ t α−1 E α,α (−λ n t α )f2,n φ n (x), x ∈ Γ, 0 < t ≤ T1 < T. (2.5)
n=1 n=1

On the one hand, for z ∈ S1 := {z ∈ ℂ : |arg z| ≤ min{ πα − 2π , π}, |z| ≥ t0 }, it is obtained from Proposition 2.2
that
∞ ∞ 󵄨 󵄨󵄨 ∞
󵄨 C
∑ max |z α−1 E α,α (−λ n z α )f n φ n (x)| ≤ t0α−1 ∑ 󵄨󵄨󵄨󵄨 󵄨 −1
n 󵄨󵄨󵄨 ≤ Ct 0 ∑ λ n
fn λm m−1
|f n | ≤ Ct−1
0 ‖f‖D(A γ ) (2.6)
n=1 x∈ Ω̄
n=1 󵄨 1 + λ n z α 󵄨 n=1

for γ > 2d − 1. So the above series is uniform convergent over z ∈ S1 for x ∈ Ω.̄ On the other hand, we know that
the Mittag-Leffler function E α,α (−λ n z α ) is analytic over the domain S2 := {z ∈ ℂ : |z| > 0, |arg z| < π} based
on its definition. Thus, equation (2.5) is analytic over the domain z ∈ S1 ∩ S2 for x ∈ Ω̄ by the Weierstrass
theorem. Especially, it can be extended to Ω̄ × (0, ∞), i.e.,
∞ ∞
∑ t α−1 E α,α (−λ n t α )f1,n φ n (x) = ∑ t α−1 E α,α (−λ n t α )f2,n φ n (x), x ∈ Γ, t > 0. (2.7)
n=1 n=1

Set {μ n }n∈ℕ with 0 < μ1 < μ2 < μ3 < ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ and denote by {φ n k }1≤k≤m n an orthonormal basis of Ker(μ n − A).
Then we can rewrite (2.7) by
∞ mn ∞ mn
∑ ( ∑ f1,n k φ n k (x))a n (t) = ∑ ( ∑ f2,n k φ n k (x))a n (t), x ∈ Γ, t > 0, (2.8)
n=1 k=1 n=1 k=1

where a n (t) = t α−1 E α,α (−μ n t α ). From (2.6), one obtains

∞
|e−t Re z ∑ a n (t)f n φ n (x)| ≤ Ce−t Re z ‖f‖D(A γ ) ,
n=1

and e−t Re z is integrable in t ∈ (0, +∞) for fixed z satisfying Re z > 0. By the Lebesgue convergence theorem,
we can take the Laplace transform for (2.8). By L(a(t))(z) = z α +μ1
n
, Re z > 0 (refer to [7]), we arrive at
∞ mn ∞ mn
1 1
∑ ( ∑ f1,n k φ n k (x)) = ∑ ( ∑ f2,n k φ n k (x)) α , x ∈ Γ, Re z > 0,
n=1 k=1
zα + μ n n=1 k=1 z + μn

which implies
∞ mn ∞ mn
φ n k (x) φ n (x) απ
∑ ∑ f1,n k = ∑ ∑ f2,n k k , x ∈ Γ, η ∈ S3 := {z ∈ ℂ : |arg(z)| < }, (2.9)
n=1 k=1
η + μ n n=1 k=1 η + μn 2

where η = z α . As
∞ mn 󵄨
󵄨 1 󵄨󵄨 ∞ 󵄨󵄨 1 󵄨󵄨
∑ ∑ 󵄨󵄨󵄨󵄨f n k φ n k (x)󵄨󵄨󵄨󵄨 ≤ ∑ ‖f n k φ n ‖L∞ (Ω) 󵄨󵄨󵄨󵄨 󵄨󵄨,
󵄨󵄨
n=1 k=1 󵄨 η + μ n 󵄨 n=1 󵄨 η + λ n 󵄨
 L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order | 7

one can see that the above series is internally closed uniform convergence in η ∈ ℂ \ {−μ n }∞ n=1 similarly to
(2.4). Using the Weierstrass theorem, both sides of (2.9) are analytic in η ∈ ℂ \ {−μ n }∞
n=1 . Therefore, one can
∞
analytically continue η such that (2.9) holds for η ∈ ℂ \ {−μ n }n=1 .
Now we can take a suitable disk which only includes μ l . Using the Cauchy integral theorem, integrating
(2.9) along this disk, we obtain that
ml
u l (x) = ∑ (f1 − f2 , φ l k )φ l k (x) = 0, x ∈ Γ.
k=1

Since (A − μ l )u l = 0 in Ω, and u l = ∂u
∂n = 0 on Γ, the uniqueness of the Cauchy problem for elliptic equa-
l

tions (e.g., see Isakov [4, Theorem 3.3.1, p. 58]) implies u l = 0 in Ω for each l ∈ ℕ. Combining the linearly
independence of {φ l k }1≤k≤m l in Ω, we obtain that (f1 − f2 , φ l k ) = 0 for 1 ≤ k ≤ m l , l ∈ ℕ. Therefore f1 = f2
in L2 (Ω).

Remark 1. From the above proof, we find in Theorem 1.1 that the uniqueness result is also valid if the initial
4 , and r ∈ C[0, T] with r(0) ≠ 0.
state vanishes, and f ∈ D(A γ ) with a nonzero trace for γ > 2d+1

Remark 2. In Theorem 1.1, there is a condition Aϕ|∂Ω ≠ 0 for the initial function. This condition is quite
strong but it is essential. If not, we can easily construct a counter-example: Suppose r(t) = 1 and consider
the differential operator A = −∆. We construct a time independent solution u(x, t) = ϕ(x) with ϕ ∈ C∞ ̄
0 ( Ω).
It is obvious that the initial function u(x, 0) = ϕ does not satisfy the condition Aϕ|∂Ω ≠ 0. We can see that
this solution solves IBVP (1.1) with f = −∆ϕ for arbitrary fractional order α ∈ (0, 1). Thus the fractional order
cannot be determined uniquely by the partial Cauchy’s data.

3 Non-stationary iterative Tikhonov regularization method

In this section, we propose a numerical algorithm for simultaneously recovering the space-dependent source
term f(x) and fractional order α of the IBVP (1.1) by the additional boundary measured data u(x, t) = g(x, t),
(x, t) ∈ Γ × (0, T]. In this paper, we use the modified non-stationary iterative Tikhonov regularization method
to find a stable approximation.
Based on Lemma 2.4, we define a forward operator

F : (f(x), α) ∈ D(F) 󳨃→ u(x, t; f, α)|x∈Γ ∈ L2 (Γ × (0, T)), (3.1)

where D(F) = {(f(x), α) ∈ L2 (0, T) × (0, 1)}, and u(x, t; f, α) is the solution of (1.1). Thus the inverse problem
is formulated into solving the following abstract operator equation:

F(f, α) = g(x, t).

Let (f k , α k ) ∈ D(F) be the kth approximation of (f, α). From physical considerations we knew that g δ is
a reasonably close approximation of some ideal g = F(f, α) in the range of F. Then the nonlinear mapping
F(f, α) in (3.1) can be replaced approximatively by its linearization around (f k , α k ), i.e.,

F(f, α) ≈ F(f k , α k ) + Ff󸀠 (f k , α k )(f − f k ) + Fα󸀠 (f k , α k )(α − α k ).

Then the nonlinear inverse problem F(f, α) = h δ can be transformed into a linear inverse problem at the
(k + 1)st step (this method was first introduced by papers [8, 12]):

Ff󸀠 (f k , α k )(f − f k ) + Fα󸀠 (f k , α k )(α − α k ) = g δ − F(f k , α k ).

Therefore, the (k + 1)st iteration is to find the (f k+1 , α k+1 ) by minimizing

1 󸀠 k k k μk νk
J(δf k , δα k ) = ‖F (f , α )δf + Fα󸀠 (f k , α k )δα k − (g δ − F(f k , α k ))‖2L2 (Γ×(0,T)) + ‖δf k ‖2D(A γ ) + |δα k |2 , (3.2)
2 f 2 2
where μ k , ν k > 0 are regularization parameters, h δ is the noisy functions of h, δf k = f k+1 − f k , δα k = α k+1 − α k .
8 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

In the following, we use a finite-dimensional approximation algorithm to solve the variational prob-
lem (3.2). Suppose that {ϕ n (x) : n = 1, 2, . . . } is an appropriate set of basis functions in D(A γ ). Let
N N
f k+1 (x) ≈ ∑ a k+1
n ϕ n (x) and f k (x) ≈ ∑ a kn ϕ n (x),
n=1 n=1

where N ∈ ℕ and a kn , n = 1, 2, . . . , N, are the expansion coefficients. We set

Φ N = span{ϕ1 , ϕ2 , . . . , ϕ N }

and define two N-dimensional vectors

a k+1 = (a1k+1 , a2k+1 , . . . , a k+1

N ), a = (a 1 , a 2 , . . . , a N ) ∈ ℝ .
k k k k N

We identify approximations f k+1 (x), f k (x) ∈ Φ N with vectors a k+1 , a k ∈ ℝN , respectively. Denote

b k = (a k , α k ) := (b1k , b2k , . . . , b kN+1 ).

A feasible way for the numerical solution of (3.2) is to solve the following minimization problem:

min {‖∇Tb u(x, t; b k )δb k − (g δ − u(x, t; b k )‖2L2 (Γ×(0,T)) + δb k A k (δb k )T }, (3.3)

δb k ∈ℝN+1

where A k = diag((μ k (A γ ϕ i , A γ ϕ j )L2 (Ω) )N×N , ν k ), δb k = b k+1 − b k and b T denotes the transpose of b.
Next, we give an inversion algorithm for determining a space dependent source term f(x) and the frac-
tional order α. We set
b k+1 = b k + δb k , k = 1, 2, . . . .
We compute δb k by the variational theory. As we know,

u(x, t; b k + τe1 ) − u(x, t; b k ) u(x, t; b k + τe N+1 ) − u(x, t; b k )

∇b u(x, t; b k ) = ( ,..., )
τ τ
=: (b1 , . . . , b N+1 ),

where τ is a differential step and e i = (0, . . . , 0, 1, 0, . . . , 0), i = 1, . . . , N + 1. By variational theory, problem

(3.3) is equivalent to the following normal equation:

(A k + B)(δb k )T = V,

where B = ((b i , b j )L2 (Γ×(0,T)) )(N+1)×(N+1) and V = ((g δ (x, t) − u(x, t; b k ), b i )L2 (Γ×(0,T)) )(N+1)×1 .

4 Numerical implementation
In this section, we present the numerical results for three examples in the one- and two-dimensional cases
to show the effectiveness of the modified non-stationary iterative Tikhonov regularization method.
The noisy data is generated by adding a random perturbation, i.e.,

g(x, t)δ = g(x, t) + ϵg(x, t) ⋅ (2 ⋅ rand(size(g(x, t))) − 1), (x, t) ∈ Γ × (0, T).

The corresponding noise level is calculated by δ = ‖g δ − g‖L2 (Γ×(0,T)) , where Γ is the partial boundary of Ω.
To show the accuracy of the numerical solution, we compute the approximate error denoted by

‖f k (x) − f(x)‖L2 (Ω) |α k − α|

rek = + ,
‖f(x)‖L2 (Ω) |α|

where f k (x) and α k are the approximations at the kth iteration of the source function and the fractional order,
respectively, and f(x) and α are the exact solutions of the inverse problem.
 L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order | 9

The residual E k at the kth iteration is given by

E k = ‖u(x, t; f k , α k ) − g δ (x, t)‖L2 (Γ×(0,T)) .
In an iteration algorithm, most of all we must find a suitable stopping rule. In this study we use the
well-known discrepancy principle [16], i.e., we choose k satisfying the following inequality
E k ≤ ηδ < E k−1 ,
where η > 1 is a constant and can be taken heuristically to be 1.01, see, e.g., [3].
The second key point in performing the above inversion algorithm is to choose a suitable approximate
space Φ N for the source function, a proper regularization parameter, a fine numerical differential step and
a decent initial iteration. Generally speaking, it is important how to choose an optimal regularization param-
eter on the realization of the algorithm when using a regularization strategy. In particular, for the simulta-
neous inversion problem, some inversion algorithm may fail due to ill-posedness of the inverse problem,
if still utilizing an empirical choice method for the regularization parameter. In this paper, the regularization
parameters μ k and ν k are selected as the sigmoid-type function based on its properties given by
1 1
μk = , νk = ,
1 + exp(β(k − k0 )) 1 + exp(β(k − k1 ))
where k is the iteration step, β > 0 and k i , i = 0, 1, are a priori chosen numbers and adjust parameters,
respectively.

4.1 One-dimensional case

Without loss of generality, we set Ω T = (0, 1) × (0, T] and T = 1. The grid points on [0, 1] and [0, T] are both
51 when solving the direct problem by finite difference method in [17] (see also [24] for detailed discrete
schemes). In this case we take the elliptic operator A as the Laplace operator and Γ as a point x = 0 and Φ S
is chosen as a subspace of eigenfunctions for the elliptic operator A:
Φ S = span{1, √2 cos(πx), . . . , √2 cos((S − 1)πx)}.
Example 1. We firstly test a numerical example for a direct problem that has an exact solution. Suppose the
unknown source term f(x) = exp(x), and take u(x, t) = (t1+α + 2) exp(x). Then the temporal source term, the
initial function and the boundary state can be calculated by the expression of u according to the IBVP (1.1).
We see that r(t) = Γ(2+α)
Γ(2) t − (t
1+α + 2), ϕ(x) = 2 exp(x), u (0, t) = t 1+α + 2 and u (1, t) = exp(1)(t 1+α + 2).
x x
Here the boundary measurements u(0, t) can be obtained by the formula u(0, t) = t1+α + 2. The numerical
results for Example 1 by using the discrepancy principle for various noise levels in the cases of α = 0.3 and
α = 0.8 are shown in Figure 1 and Table 1, respectively. We choose the initial guess as f0 = 0 and α0 = 0.5,
the truncated level S = 4, the differential step τ = 0.001, the a priori chosen numbers k0 = 6, k1 = 5 and
adjust parameter β = 0.08, and γ = 21 .

Example 2. We test a smooth solution. Take the unknown source f(x) = cos(πx) + x2 (1 − x)2 , the temporal
source r(t) = t exp(t), and the initial state ϕ(x) = cos(πx) in IBVP (1.1) with the homogeneous Neumann
boundary condition. Here the boundary measurements u(0, t) is obtained by solving the direct problem (1.1)
by using the finite difference method. The numerical results for Example 2 by using the discrepancy principle
for various noise levels in the cases of α = 0.2 and α = 0.8 are shown in Figure 2 and Table 3, respectively.
We choose the initial guess as f0 = 0 and α0 = 0.5, the truncated level S = 2, the differential step τ = 0.1, the
a priori chosen numbers k0 = 6, k1 = 5 and adjust parameter β = 0.08, and γ = 21 .

Example 3. In the third example, we test a nonsmooth solution with a cusp. Take unknown source

{
{ 1, 0 ≤ x < 0.1,
{
{
{
{2.5x + 0.75, 0.1 ≤ x < 0.5,
f(x) = {
{
{ −2.5x + 3.25, 0.5 ≤ x < 0.9,
{
{
{
{1, 0.9 ≤ x ≤ 1,
 10 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

2.8 2.8
exact exact
2.6 =0, k=40 2.6 =0, k=40
=0.001,k=26 =0.001,k=4
=0.005,k=15 =0.005,k=4
2.4 2.4
=0.01, k=11 =0.01, k=4

2.2 2.2
f(x) and f k (x)

f(x) and f k (x)

2 2

1.8 1.8

1.6 1.6

1.4 1.4

1.2 1.2

1 1
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
x x
(a) α = 0.3 (b) α = 0.8

Figure 1: The numerical results for Example 1 for various noise levels.

ϵ
α 0 0.001 0.005 0.01

0.3 0.3003 0.2993 0.3024 0.3029

0.8 0.8007 0.7963 0.7935 0.7892

Table 1: The inversion fractional order for Example 1 for various noise levels with α = 0.3 and α = 0.8.

ϵ
α 0 0.001 0.005 0.01

0.3 0.0701(40) 0.0713(26) 0.0808(15) 0.0875(11)

0.5 0.0773(40) 0.0732(30) 0.0769(17) 0.0880(12)
0.7 0.0855(40) 0.0689(31) 0.0934(8) 0.0884(6)
0.9 0.0550(40) 0.0579(17) 0.0618(6) 0.0629(5)

Table 2: The relative error rek and stop steps k with different noise levels ϵ and fractional order α for Example 1.

1.5 1.5
exact exact
=0, k=40 =0, k=40
1 =0.001,k=11 1 =0.001,k=5
=0.01,k=6 =0.01,k=4
=0.05, k=4 =0.05, k=3

0.5 0.5
f(x) and f k (x)

f(x) and f k (x)

0 0

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

-1.5 -1.5
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
x x
(a) α = 0.2 (b) α = 0.8

Figure 2: The numerical results for Example 2 for various noise levels.
 L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order | 11

ϵ
α 0 0.001 0.01 0.05

0.2 0.2000 0.1999 0.1987 0.1928

0.8 0.8000 0.8000 0.7998 0.7991

Table 3: The inversion fractional order for Example 2 for various noise levels with α = 0.2 and α = 0.8.

ϵ
α 0 0.001 0.01 0.05

0.2 0.0323(40) 0.0329(11) 0.0388(6) 0.1914(4)

0.4 0.0324(40) 0.0325(6) 0.0433(3) 0.1552(3)
0.6 0.0326(40) 0.0325(5) 0.0356(3) 0.0414(2)
0.8 0.0328(40) 0.0325(5) 0.0314(4) 0.0708(3)

Table 4: The relative error rek and stop steps k with different noise levels ϵ and fractional order α for Example 2.

2 2
exact exact
=0, k=40 =0, k=40
1.8 =0.001,k=23 1.8 =0.001,k=29
=0.005,k=23 =0.005,k=27
=0.01, k=22 =0.01, k=27

1.6 1.6
f(x) and f k (x)

f(x) and f k (x)

1.4 1.4

1.2 1.2

1 1

0.8 0.8
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
x x
(a) α = 0.3 (b) α = 0.7

Figure 3: The numerical results for Example 3 for various noise levels.

ϵ
α 0 0.001 0.005 0.01

0.3 0.3000 0.2995 0.2974 0.2950

0.7 0.6998 0.6993 0.6975 0.6957

Table 5: The inversion fractional order for Example 3 for various noise levels with α = 0.3 and α = 0.7.

and the rest of definite conditions are the same as Example 2. The boundary data u(0, t) is obtained by solv-
ing the direct problem (1.1) by using the finite difference method. The numerical results for Example 3 by
using the discrepancy principle for various noise levels in the cases of α = 0.3 and α = 0.7 are shown in
Figure 3 and Table 5, respectively. We choose the initial guess as f0 = 0 and α0 = 0.5, the truncated level
S = 3, the differential step τ = 0.05, the a priori chosen numbers k0 = 6, k1 = 5 and adjust parameter β = 0.8,
and γ = −1.

The numerical results of Examples 1–3 for various noise levels and different orders are shown in Figures 1–3
and Tables 1–5. On the one hand, in order to verify the effectiveness of our inversion algorithm, we firstly
test a numerical example whose boundary measurements are calculated by an accurate expression. We can
see from Figure 1 and Table 1 that the numerical results match the exact ones quite well up to 1 % noise
12 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

added in the “exact” Dirichlet data u(0, t), but the reconstruction of the source term is not ideal near the
right endpoint. This is because that the spatial source term and the initial function do not admit a homoge-
neous Neumann boundary condition. Hence the conditions for uniqueness of the inverse problem may not
be satisfied in this circumstance (see Theorem 1.1). In the second example, we recover a smooth unknown
source term from the additional boundary Cauchy’s data calculated by finite difference method. We can see
from Figure 2 and Table 3 that the numerical results match the exact ones quite well up to 5 % noise added
in the “exact” Dirichlet data because all of the functions satisfy the conditions for the uniqueness of inverse
problem. We also find that our algorithm will get worse in case of the less regularity of the unknown spatial
source from the numerical results of Example 3 (see Figure 3 and Table 5). This result is easy to predict.
On the other hand, summarizing the numerical results of Examples 1–3, we can find that the fractional
order α can always be recovered quite accurately even with relatively large noise levels, although the source
term inversion is not ideal. There are two reasons for this phenomenon. One is the inversion algorithm itself.
We know that the order requires only one coefficient to be determined, whereas the source function requires
multiple coefficients of its basis function in our inversion algorithm. This leads to easier order inversion
though it is a nonlinear inverse problem. The other stems from the additional data. We are aware of that
the inversion of the spatial source term from the information along the time trace is seriously ill-posed, so it
is not easy to reconstruct the spatial source term from the boundary Cauchy’s data ever if the fractional order
is known.
Finally, it is also observed from Tables 2 and 4 that the numerical results perform quite stable for different
orders. This shows that the above algorithm is well, nonsensitive to the orders. Since the number of iteration
steps is small, this indicates the algorithm has a fast convergence.

4.2 Two-dimensional case

In the two-dimensional case, we present one numerical example to show the effectiveness of our method.
The space domain Ω is taken as (0, 1) × (0, 1). The grid points on [0, 1] and [0, T] are both 51 when solv-
ing the direct problem by finite difference method (see also [17] or [24]). In this case we also take the
elliptic operator A as the Laplace operator and choose Γ = {(x, y) : x = 0, 0 ≤ y ≤ 1}. In this case we take
Φ S1 ×S2 = span{φ i (x)φ j (y)}, where

{1, i = 1,
φ i (x) = { i = 1, 2, . . . , S1 ,
√2 cos((i − 1)πx), i > 1,
{
and
{1, j = 1,
φ j (y) = { j = 1, 2, . . . , S2 .
√2 cos((i − 1)πy), j > 1,
{
Example 4. Assume the unknown space dependent source
1 1
f(x, y) = cos(2πx) cos(2πy) + exp(− (x3 − 3x2 )(2y3 − 3y2 )),
10 3
r(t) = exp(t),
ϕ(x, y) = 0
in IBVP (1.1) with the homogeneous Neumann boundary condition. The boundary data u(0, y, t) is obtained
by solving the direct problem (1.1) by using the finite difference method. The exact source solutions, recon-
structed source terms and the fractional order, and the absolute errors between the exact source functions
and the numerical solutions for α = 0.3 and α = 0.8 are shown in Figures 4–5. We choose the initial guess as
f0 = 0 and α0 = 0.5, the truncated level S1 = S2 = 3, the differential step τ = 0.2, the a priori chosen numbers
k0 = 6, k1 = 5 and adjust parameter β = 0.08, and γ = 0.

From Figures 4–5 and Table 6, we can see the numerical results still yield relatively accurate numerical
solutions for the two-dimensional example.
 L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order | 13

α=0.3 α inv=0.2826

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5
0.5

f inv (x,y)
f(x,y)

0
0
-0.5
-0.5
-1

-1 -1.5
1 1
1 1
0.8 0.8
0.5 0.6 0.5 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
y 0 0 x y 0 0 x
(a) Exact solution (b) Regularized solution

error
1

-0 -0.05
0.9 -0 .1105
15

-0. .1043 8
20

098 9 5
2 01
9

0.8 204 09 -0.0

.0

-0.06
-0. 734
-0

-0 5
.09 3 8
82 27 8 96
0.7 04 58 963 07
.08 .07 -0. -0.07
10 04 7

-0 -0
82
-0.07345

85

0.6 073
.0

061
105 9
-0

-0.08
-0.092015

-0. 0982
-0.1 43

-0.
8
-0.0734

61

0.5
672
-0 0.11 1677 6

-0.
y

- 0.1 229

-0.09
-0.0
- 0.1

5
43 8

0.4
.10 05
9
-

-0.079638 -0.1
0.3 -0.085827
015
-0.0
-0.0982
04 -0.092
982 -0.1 -0.11
0.2 04
5

-0 0
-0. .110 439
01

-0.1 1167758
2
09

0.1 229 -0.12

6
-0.

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x
(c) Absolute error

Figure 4: The numerical results for Example 4 for α = 0.3 with ϵ = 0.01.

ϵ
α 0 0.001 0.005 0.01

0.3 0.2783 0.2788 0.2805 0.2826

0.8 0.7963 0.7962 0.7961 0.7959

Table 6: The inversion fractional order for Example 4 for various noise levels with α = 0.3 and α = 0.8.

5 Concluding remarks
In this paper, we investigate an inverse space-dependent source and fractional order problem of a time-
fractional diffusion equation in a general domain. The uniqueness for the inverse problem is provided by
using the analytic continuation and the Laplace transformation. In addition, we employ the modified non-
stationary iterative Tikhonov regularization method to find an approximation solution for the source function
and fractional order in the one- and two-dimensional cases.
From a mathematical model point of view, we expect to establish some useful models describing a crowd
of non-homogeneous and non-stationary processes, which gives rise to the multi-term fractional diffusion
equations. As a further exploration, we will devote our efforts to some inverse problems recovering the source
term and the fractional orders for the multi-term fractional diffusion equations in the future.
 14 | L. L. Sun, X. B. Yan and K. F. Liao, Simultaneous inversion of a fractional order

α=0.8 α inv=0.7959

1.5 1

1
0.5
0.5

f inv (x,y)
f(x,y)

0
0

-0.5
-0.5

-1 -1
1 1
1 1
0.8 0.8
0.5 0.6 0.5 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
y 0 0 x y 0 0 x
(a) Exact solution (b) Regularized solution

error
1 -0.07

0.9 3
725 -0.075
-0.0 75722
6 .0789 -0.0
0.8 12 -0-0
.10 69 .0
-0.0 8210 5 1
-0 0980 -0.0 8 7
88542999
-0.08
-0 . -0.0
0.7 -0.0916842
9487
-0

6
.0 9168

-0.085
9
-0. .0884
94

-0.1012 9806

0.6
-0
0
87
6

-0.00757 789

-0.10
-0. -0.0
6
0

765 -0.09
-0-0.1
-0.
4

0.5
725 22 15
.0980 6
y

-0
92

-0 .08
3
012
-0.

-0.095
-0 .08 210
69

0.4
10

. 5
-0. 088 29 7
44

0 4 9
-0.0 916892
5

0.3 -0.1
948 4
76
69
80 76 8069
0.2 .09 .0948 684 -0.0910126 -0.105
-0. 044

0
- -0 -0.
-0

91
10 5

2
-0.0 .08849
.1

12

0.1 -0 -0.11
6

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x
(c) Absolute error

Figure 5: The numerical results for Example 4 for α = 0.8 with ϵ = 0.01.

Funding: This work is supported by the Youth Science and Technology Fund of Gansu Province (grant
no. 20JR10RA099), the Innovation Capacity Improvement Project for Colleges and Universities of Gansu
Province (grant no. 2020B-088), the Young Teachers’ Scientific Research Ability Promotion Project of
NWNU (grant no. NWNU-LKQN-18-31) and the Doctoral Scientific Research Foundation of NWNU (grant
no. 6014/0002020204).

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final measurements, Inverse Problems 34 (2018), no. 2, Article ID 025007.
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