Global existence of the Cauchy problem for a chemotactic system with predator-prey dynamics (Q2504340)

Global existence and uniqueness of non-negative weak solutions are established for a chemotactic system in \({\mathbb R}^2\) describing the space and time evolution of the bacteria density \(u\), the food density \(v\) and the chemoattractant concentration \(c\). A particular feature of the chemotactic model considered is that it accounts for the decay of the bacteria density in the absence of food supply, this phenomenon preventing the blow-up of solutions. More precisely, the system reads \[ \begin{align*}{ \partial_t u = d_u \nabla\cdot \left( \nabla u - u \nabla\chi(c) \right) + \left( \tau_1 v - \mu_1 - \nu_1 u \right) u \quad & \text{in } \ (0,\infty)\times{\Bbb R}^2 ,\cr \partial_t v = d_v \Delta v + \left( \mu_2 - \nu_2 v - \tau_2 u \right) v \quad &\text{in }\ (0,\infty)\times{\Bbb R}^2 ,\cr \partial_t c = d_c \Delta c + \beta u - \gamma c \quad & \text{in } \ (0,\infty)\times{\Bbb R}^2 , }\end{align*} \] the parameters being positive real numbers except the chemotactic sensitivity \(\chi\) which is an increasing and three times continuously differentiable function with bounded first, second and third derivatives. Local existence and uniqueness are proved by viewing the system as a perturbation of an analytic semigroup in a suitable space.