A backward problem for the time‐fractional diffusion equation

In this paper, we are concerned with the backward problem of reconstructing the initial condition of a time‐fractional diffusion equation from interior measurements. We establish uniqueness results and provide stability analysis. Our method is based on the eigenfunction expansion of the forward solution and the Tikhonov regularization to tackle the ill‐posedness issue of the underlying inverse problem. Some numerical examples are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.