Coagulation, fragmentation and growth processes in a size structured population (Q1019212)

The well-posedness of a model for the dynamics of aggregates of phytoplancton cells is etablished. More precisely, if \(u(x,t)\) denotes the number density of aggregates of size \(x\), \(0\leq x_0<x<x_1\leq\infty\), the evolution of \(u\) is governed by the coagulation-fragmentation equation with a growth term and reads \[ \begin{aligned} \partial_t u(x,t)= &-\partial_x(r(x) u(x,t)) - \mu(x) u(x,t)\\ &-a(x) u(x,t) + \int_x^{x_1} a(y) b(x|y) u(y,t) \,dy\\ &-u(x,t) \int_{x_0}^{x_1-x} k(x,y) u(y,t)\,dy + \frac{1}{2} \int_{x_0}^{x-x_0} k(x-y,y) u(x-y,t) u(y,t)\,dy \end{aligned} \] with the boundary condition \[ r(x_0) u(x_0,t) = \int_{x_0}^{x_1} \beta(y) u(y,t) \,dy. \] Existence and uniqueness of a non-negative solution in \(L^1(x_0,x_1, (1+x) dx)\) are shown under suitable growth assumptions on the data, including the boundedness of the coagulation kernel \(k\), the at most linear growth of the fragmentation rate \(a\) and of the functions \(r\) and \(\beta\) which model the cell division, and the boundedness of the number of fragments \(\int_{x_0}^{x_1} b(x|y) \,dy\). The proof relies on the theory of linear semigroups and exploits the fact that the equation is a Lipschitz perturbation of a linear equation.