Direct and inverse elastic scattering problems for diffraction gratings

This paper is concerned with the direct and inverse scattering of time-harmonic plane elastic waves by unbounded periodic structures (diffraction gratings). We present a variational approach to the forward scattering problems with Lipschitz grating profiles and give a survey of recent uniqueness and existence results. We also report on recent global uniqueness results within the class of piecewise linear grating profiles for the corresponding inverse elastic scattering problems. Moreover, a discrete Galerkin method is presented to efficiently approximate solutions of direct scattering problems via an integral equation approach. Finally, an optimization method for solving the inverse problem of recovering a 2D periodic structure from scattered elastic waves measured above the structure is discussed