Stabilization of arbitrary structures in a doubly degenerate reaction-diffusion system modeling bacterial motion on a nutrient-poor agar (Q2127347)

The author studies the doubly degenerate parabolic system \[\begin{cases} u_t = \nabla \cdot (uv \nabla u) + l uv, & \quad (x,t) \in \Omega \times (0,\infty),\\ v_t = \Delta v -uv, & \quad (x,t) \in \Omega \times (0,\infty), \end{cases}\] endowed with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions and nonnegative initial data \(u_0, v_0 \in L^\infty(\Omega)\) such that \(u_0 \not\equiv 0\), \(v_0 \not\equiv 0\), and \(\sqrt{v_0} \in W^{1,2}(\Omega)\). Moreover, it is assumed that \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is a bounded convex domain with smooth boundary with \(n \in \mathbb{N}\) as well as \(l \ge 0\). Here, \(u\) denotes the density of a population and \(v\) the food resource distribution, e.g. for Bacillus subtilis in nutrient-poor environments. The author proves the existence of a global weak solution \((u,v) \in C^0(\overline{\Omega} \times (0,\infty)) \cap C^{2,1} (\overline{\Omega} \times (0,\infty))\) such that \(v \in L^\infty (\Omega \times (0,\infty))\) and \(u \in L^\infty((0,\infty); L^p(\Omega))\) for all \(p \in [1, \frac{n}{(n-2)_+})\). Moreover, it is shown that \((u(\cdot,t), v(\cdot,t))\) converges to \((u_\infty,0)\) as \(t \to \infty\) with respect to a certain topological setting for some \(u_\infty\) belonging to \(L^p(\Omega)\) for all \(p \in [1, \frac{n}{(n-2)_+})\). Finally, in case of \(n \le 5\), a stability property is established which in particular shows that any \((u_0,0)\), with \(u_0\) as above being in addition suitably regular, is a stable steady state of the above problem. In the proof it is first shown that for suitably regularized initial data there are classical solutions \((u_\varepsilon, v_\varepsilon)\) to a family of regularized approximate problems for \(\varepsilon \in (0,1)\). The existence of a global weak solution to the original problem is based on several a priori estimates for the approximate problems, where particularly global \(L^p\) bounds for \(u_\varepsilon\) and \(u\) are deduced from two novel functional inequalities. The proof of the large time and stability behavior in particular relies on estimates for \((u_\varepsilon)_t\) in dual spaces of appropriate Sobolev spaces.