Uniqueness in phaseless inverse scattering problems with known superposition of incident point sources

This paper is concerned with the uniqueness in inverse acoustic scattering problems with the modulus of the far-field patterns co-produced by the obstacle (resp. medium) and the point sources. Based on the superposition of point sources as the incident waves, we overcome the difficulty of translation invariance induced by a single incident plane wave, and rigorously prove that the location and shape of the obstacle as well as its boundary condition or the refractive index can be uniquely determined by the modulus of far-field patterns. This work is different from our previous work on phaseless inverse scattering problems (Zhang and Guo 2018 Inverse Problems 34 085002), in which the reference ball technique and the superposition of incident waves were used, and the phaseless far-field data generated only by the the scatterer were considered. In this paper, the phaseless far-field data co-produced by the scatterer and the point sources are used, thus the configuration is practically more feasible. Moreover, since the reference ball is not needed, the justification of uniqueness is much more clear and concise.