Chemotaxis: from kinetic equations to aggregate dynamics (Q1938513)

The hydrodynamic limit of a one-dimensional kinetic chemotaxis model is investigated. More precisely, denoting the distribution function of cells at time \(t>0\) and position \(x\in\mathbb{R}\) with velocity \(v\in\{-c,c\}\) by \(f_\varepsilon(t,x,v)\), its dynamics is given by the following equations: \[ \partial_t f_\varepsilon(t,x,v) + v \partial_x f_\varepsilon(t,x,v) = \frac{1}{\varepsilon} \left[ \Phi(-v \partial_x S_\varepsilon(t,x)) f_\varepsilon(t,x,-v) - \Phi(v \partial_x S_\varepsilon(t,x)) f_\varepsilon(t,x,v) \right] , \] where \(S_\varepsilon\) denotes the chemoattractant concentration and is a solution to \[ -\partial_x^2 S_\varepsilon(t,x) + S_\varepsilon(t,x) = \rho_\varepsilon(t,x) = f_\varepsilon(t,x,c) + f_\varepsilon(t,x,-c) , \] and \(\Phi\) is the turning rate which is a positive and non-increasing function. In the hydrodynamic limit \(\varepsilon\to 0\), the pair \((\rho_\varepsilon,S_\varepsilon)\) is expected to converge to a solution \((\rho,S)\) to \[ \partial_t\rho + \partial_x\left( a(\partial_x S) \rho \right) = 0 , \quad -\partial_x^2 S + S = \rho , \] with \(a=-c (\Phi/\Phi(0) - 1)\), and the purpose of the paper under review is to give a rigorous proof of this convergence result. The main difficulty to be overcome is to give a meaning to the product \(a(\partial_x S) \rho\) as \(\rho(t)\) is only a bounded measure and \(a(\partial_x S(t)) \in L^\infty(\mathbb{R})\). This is done here by the use of an appropriate notion of solution (duality solution) and relies on the fact that \(\partial_x S\) satisfies a one-sided Lipschitz estimate. Besides the well-posedness of the limit problem (in a suitable sense) and the convergence of the solutions \((\rho_\varepsilon,S_\varepsilon)\) to the kinetic model as \(\varepsilon\to 0\), a numerical scheme is developed for the limit problem and numerical simulations of finite time collapse are performed.