Nonlinearized approach to profile inversion

A method for reconstructing the index of refraction of a bounded inhomogeneous object of known geometric configuration from measured far‐field scattering data is presented. This work is an extension of recent results on the direct scattering problem wherein the governing domain integral equation was solved iteratively by a successive relaxation technique. The relaxation parameters were chosen to minimize the residual error at each step. Convergence of this process was established for indices of refraction much larger than required for convergence of the Born approximation. For the inverse problem, the same technique is applied, except is this case both the index of refraction and the field are unknown. Iterative solutions for both unknowns are postulated with two relaxation parameters at each step. They are determined by simultaneously minimizing the residual errors in satisfying the domain integral equation and matching the measured data. This procedure retains the nonlinear relation between the two unknowns. Numerical results are presented for the dielectric slab. The algorithm is shown to be effective in cases where the iterative solution of the direct problem is rapidly convergent and outperforms the Born‐based approaches.