Sparsity regularization for inverse problems with non-trivial nullspaces

We study a weighted $\ell^1$-regularization technique for solving inverse problems when the forward operator has a significant nullspace. In particular, we prove that a sparse source can be exactly recovered as the regularization parameter $\alpha$ tends to zero. Furthermore, for positive values of $\alpha$, we show that the regularized inverse solution equals the true source multiplied by a scalar $\gamma$, where $\gamma = 1 - c\alpha$. Our analysis is supported by numerical experiments for cases with one and several local sources. This investigation is motivated by PDE-constrained optimization problems arising in connection with ECG and EEG recordings, but the theory is developed in terms of Euclidean spaces. Our results can therefore be applied to many problems.