An iterative regularization method for inverse phonon radiative transport problem in nanoscale thin films

An inverse phonon radiative transport problem with an alternative form of adjoint equation is solved in this study by using conjugate gradient method (CGM) to estimate the unknown boundary temperature distributions, based on the phonon intensity measurements. The CGM in dealing with the present integrodifferential governing equations is not as straightforward as for the normal differential equations; special treatments are needed to overcome the difficulties. Results obtained in this inverse analysis will be justified based on the numerical experiments where two different unknown temperature (or phonon intensity) distributions are to be determined. Finally, it is shown that accurate boundary temperatures can always be obtained with CGM. Copyright q 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd