Regularization of linear and nonlinear ill-posed problems by mollification

Abstract: In this paper, we address the problem of approximating solutions of ill-posed problems using mollification. We quickly review existing mollification regularization methods and provide two new approximate solutions to a general ill-posed equation $T(f) =g$ where $T$ can be nonlinear. The regularized solutions we define extend the work of Bonnefond and Mar\'echal \cite{xapi}, and trace their origins in the variational formulation of mollification, which to the best of our knowledge, was first introduced by Lannes et al. \cite{lannes}. In addition to consistency results, for the first time, we provide some convergence rates for a mollification method defined through a variational formulation.