Locally bounded global solutions in a three-dimensional chemotaxis-Stokes system with nonlinear diffusion (Q1946698)

The work discusses the mathematical model for the chemotaxis-based motion of swimming bacteria in an incompressible fluid. The authors consider a slow motion of the fluid, neglecting the convective term in the full Navier-Stokes equation (obtaining the Stokes equation). Additionally, the diffusion of bacteria is considered as a movement through a porous media, i.e. it is taken into account via the term \(\nabla\cdot(D(n)\nabla n)\), where \(n\) is the bacterial density and \(D(n)\) is the density-dependent diffusion coefficient. Finally, the system is supplied by the equation governing the motion of the chemotaxis agent (oxygen). The resulted chemotaxis-Stokes system is analyzed in a 3D smoothly bounded domain under the additional restriction \(D(s) \geq ms^{m-1}\) for all \(s>0\). It is shown that there exists at least one global bounded weak solution satisfying this system if \(m>7/8\). This result improves the previous estimations [\textit{M. Di Francesco} et al., Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 28, No. 4, 1437--1453 (2010; Zbl 1276.35103); \textit{J.-G. Liu} and \textit{A. Lorz}, Ann. Inst. Henri Poincaré, Anal. Non Linéaire 28, No. 5, 643--652 (2011; Zbl 1236.92013)].