Global attractor for a nonlocal model for biological aggregation (Q471962)

The author considers the asymptotic behavior as time goes to infinity of solutions to the following equation in a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) (\(d \geq 1\)) \[ u_t+\nabla \cdot \left(u\;V\right)=\Delta A(u)\quad\text{in }\Omega \times (0,\infty). \] This equation represents a continuum model for biological aggregations. Here \(\mathcal{K}:\mathbb{R}^{d} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) models the sensing range and degradation of the population density \(u\), and \(V=\nabla \mathcal{K} \star u\). The term in the right-hand side models the dispersal mechanism. The boundary \(\partial \Omega\) consists of two disjoint open subsets \(\Gamma_{N} \neq \emptyset\) and \(\Gamma_D\). The boundary conditions are \(\left(\nabla A(u)-u\;V\right)\cdot n=0\) on \(\Gamma_{N} \times (0,\infty)\) and \(u=0\) on \(\Gamma_{D} \times (0,\infty)\). The initial condition is \(u|_{t=0}=u_0\) in \(\Omega\). Solutions are sought in the following weak sense: For a given \(T>0\), \(u:\Omega \times [0,T] \rightarrow [0,\infty)\) is a weak solution if \(u \in L^{\infty}(\Omega \times [0,T])\), \(A(u) \in L^{2}(0,T;H_{D}^{1}(\Omega))\), \(u_t \in L^2(0,T;(H_{D}^{1}(\Omega))^{*})\), \(u\;\nabla \mathcal{K}\star u \in L^{2}(\Omega \times [0,T])\), and \[ \langle u_t(t),w\rangle+\int_{\Omega}\nabla A(u(t))\cdot \nabla w-u(t)(\nabla \mathcal{K}\star u(t))\cdot \nabla w\;dx=0 \] for all \(w\) in \(H^{1}_{D}(\Omega)\). Under certain assumptions on \(\Omega\), \(A\) and \(\mathcal{K}\) with \(0 \leq u_0 \in L^{\infty}(\Omega)\), the existence of a unique global nonnegative solution in the weak sense is proved, together with the following dissipative inequality: For all \(t \geq 0\), \[ \mathcal{E}(u(t))+\int_{0}^{t}\int_{\Omega}u(s)\;\left|\nabla \Phi^{\prime}(u(s))-\nabla \mathcal{K}\star u(s)\right|^2\;dxds \leq \mathcal{E}(u_0), \] where \[ \mathcal{E}(u(t)):=\int_{\Omega}\Phi(u(t))dx-\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega}\int_{\Omega}u(x,t)K(x-y)u(y,t)dxdy \] with \(\Phi\) strictly convex on \((0,\infty)\) such that \(\Phi^{''}(y):=A^{\prime}(y)/y\) and \(\Phi(0)=\Phi^{\prime}(1)=0\). The next result is a lemma proving the Hölder continuity of solutions with respect to the initial data in \(H^{1}_{D}(\Omega)^{\star}\) and \(H^1(\Omega)^{\star}\). In the third section of the paper, uniform estimates for the solutions of the problem are obtained. These estimates lead to optimal regularity results for weak solutions on \(\Omega \times [\tau,\infty)\) for every \(\tau>0\). The existence of a global attractor, globally bounded in \(C^{\alpha}(\overline{\Omega})\), \(\alpha \in (0,1)\), is proved. ``Furthermore, in the non-degenerate case we give a complete structural characterization of the global attractor, and also discuss the convergence of any bounded solutions to steady states. In particular, under suitable assumptions on the parameters of the problem, we establish the convergence of the bounded solution \(u(t)\) to a single steady state \(u_*\), and the rate of convergence''.