Range characterization of the ray transform on Sobolev spaces of symmetric tensor fields in two dimensions

The ray transform $I_m$ integrates a symmetric $m$ rank tensor field $f$ on ${\mathbb{R}}^n$ over lines. In the case of $n\ge 3$, the range characterization of the operator $I_m$ on weighted Sobolev spaces $H_t^s({\mathbb{R}}^n;S^m{\mathbb{R}}^n)$ was obtained in [V. Krishnan and V. Sharafutdinov. Range characterization of ray transform on Sobolev spaces of symmetric tensor fields. Inverse Problems and Imaging, 18(6), 1272–1293, 2024]. Here we obtain a range characterization result in higher order weighted Sobolev spaces in two dimensions. Range characterization in the case of $n=2$ is very different from that for $n\ge 3$, and this allows us to obtain such a result in higher order weighted Sobolev spaces $H_t^{r,s}({\mathbb{R}}^2)$ for any real $r$. Nevertheless, our main tool is again the Reshetnyak formula stating that $\parallel I_{m}f{\parallel }_{H_{t+1\mathrm{/}2}^{(r,s+1\mathrm{/}2)}(T{\mathbb{S}}^{n-1})}=\parallel f{\parallel }_{H_t^{(r,s)}({\mathbb{R}}^n;S^m{\mathbb{R}}^n)}$ for a solenoidal tensor field $f$.