Chemotactic collapse in a parabolic system of mathematical biology (Q5931516)

The authors consider the Keller-Segel model of chemotaxis, \[ u_t = \nabla (\nabla u -u \nabla v), \quad \quad v_t = \Delta v -v +u \] in a planar domain \(\Omega\) with Neumann boundary conditions on \(\partial\Omega\). The paper characterizes finite-time blowup in this system. Note that conditions on the initial data leading to finite-time blowup have been considered, among others, by \textit{M. A. Herrero} and \textit{Juan J. L. Velázquez} [Ann. Sc. Norm. Super. Pisa, Cl. Sci., IV. Ser. 24, 633-683 (1997; Zbl 0904.35037)] and \textit{T. Nagai, T. Senba} and \textit{K. Yoshida} [Funkc. Ekvacioj, Ser. Int. 40, 411-433 (1997; Zbl 0901.35104)]. There are three principal results in this paper. Theorem 1 describes the structure of the solution close to an isolated blowup point \(x_0\) as \(t \rightarrow T_{\max}\), the blowup time, in terms of weak-* convergence in a space of localized Radon measures, and shows that the singular part of the density converges to \(m \delta_{x_0}(dx)^X\), where \(m=8\pi\) if \(x _0 \in \Omega\) and \(m=4\pi\) if \(x_0 \in \partial \Omega\). Theorem 2 states that if a Lyapunov function \(W(t)\) satisfies \[ \inf_{0 \leq t < T_{\max}} W(t) > -\infty, \] then all the blowup points are isolated. Finally, Theorem 3 specializes to the case of radially symmetric domain \(\Omega\) and initial data and shows that in this case finite-time blowup can occur only at the origin. The methods used in proving these remarkable results employ the structure of the Green's function of the semigroup generated by \(-\Delta +I\) in \(L^p\), and localized energy estimates to get basically a lower bound on the \(L^1\) bound on the solution close to a blowup point (see Proposition 4.3).