A free boundary approach to non-scattering obstacles with vanishing contrast

Abstract: Motivated by questions in inverse scattering theory, we develop free boundary methods in obstacle problems where both the solution and the right hand side of the equation may have varying sign. The key condition that prevents the appearance of corners is that the right hand side should be related to a harmonic polynomial. In this setting we prove new free boundary results not found in existing literature. Notably, our results imply that piecewise $C^1$ or convex penetrable obstacles in two dimensions and edge points in higher dimensions always cause nontrivial scattering of any incoming wave.