Abstract

We consider a transmission wave equation in two embedded domains in , where the speed is a1 > 0 in the inner domain and a2 > 0 in the outer domain. We prove a global Carleman inequality for this problem under the hypothesis that the inner domain is strongly convex and a1 > a2. As a consequence of this inequality, uniqueness and Lipschitz stability are obtained for the inverse problem of retrieving a stationary potential for the wave equation with Dirichlet data and discontinuous principal coefficient from a single time-dependent Neumann boundary measurement. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd.