Global existence and finite time blow-up of solutions of a Gierer-Meinhardt system (Q338459)

Global existence and finite time blow-up are investigated for non-negative classical solutions to the following Gierer-Meinhardt reaction-diffusion system: \[ \begin{aligned} u_t & = d_1 \Delta u - a_1 u + \frac{u^p}{v^q} + \delta_1\;, \qquad x\in\Omega\;, \;t>0\;, \\ v_t & = d_2 \Delta v - a_2 v + \frac{u^r}{v^s} + \delta_2\;, \qquad x\in\Omega\;, \;t>0\;, \end{aligned} \] with non-negative and bounded source terms \(\delta_1\) and \(\delta_2\) (depending only on \(x\)), supplemented with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions and non-negative initial conditions \((u_0,v_0)\). Here, \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain of \(\mathbb{R}^d\), \(d\geq 1\), with smooth boundary, the parameters \(q\), \(r\), \(d_1\), \(d_2\), \(a_1\), \(a_2\) are positive, \(p>1\), and \(s>-1\). It is already known that, if \(p-1<r\) and \(r>(p-1)(s+1)/q\), then there is a global solution for all initial conditions. The paper under review deals with parameters \((p,q,r,s)\) which do not satisfy these inequalities. It is first shown that, if \(p-1>r\) and \(r\leq (p-1)(s+1)/q\), then solutions blow up in finite time as soon as \(\min u_0\) is large enough, thereby extending a previous result obtained under the additional assumptions that \(\delta_1\) is constant, \(\delta_2=0\), and \(r<(p-1)(s+1)/q\). The next results are all restricted to the case of equal diffusion coefficients \(d_1=d_2>0\) and three different cases are handled separately: \(r=p-1\), \(r>p-1\), and \(r<p-1\). Global existence and finite time blow-up are proved depending on the sign of \(r-(p-1)(s+1)/q\), additional assumptions on the initial data being needed as well in some cases. The proofs rely on integral or pointwise estimates for \(u^\alpha/v^\beta\) for suitably chosen real parameters \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\).