A critical exponent for blow-up in a two-dimensional chemotaxis-consumption system (Q6107065)

The authors study the following repulsive chemotaxis-consumption system \[ \begin{cases} \partial_t u = \nabla \cdot (D(u)\nabla u) + \nabla \cdot (u\nabla v)\\ 0= \Delta v - uv \end{cases}\tag{1} \] in a disk \(B_R(0) \subset \mathbb{R}^2\) along with the boundary conditions \[ (D(u)\nabla u + u \nabla v)\cdot \nu = 0, \ v = M (\mbox{a positive constant}), \ \ \ x \in \partial B_R(0), \ t >0, \] where \(D(\xi)\) suitably generalizes the function \((\xi + 1)^{-\alpha}, \xi \geq 0.\) Here \(u\) represents the population density and \(v\) is the signal concentration. In a recent article, the second author et al. [Proc. R. Soc. Edinb., Sect. A, Math. 153, No. 4, 1150--1166 (2023; Zbl 1518.35155)] observed that for an admirably strong enhancement of chemotactic motion (i.e. if the term \(\nabla \cdot (u\nabla v)\) replaced by \(\nabla \cdot (u\frac{\nabla v}{v})\)), the system (1) exhibits finite time blow-up of solutions for \(\alpha >0\) within a considerably large set of choices of the initial data. The main goal of the present article is to illustrate certain phenomena of criticality regarding the occurrence of singularity formation. In particular, the authors observed that finite time blow-up of \textit{radial solutions} do not require strengthening of the cross-diffusion at small signal concentrations. The main results of the article are: \begin{itemize} \item Assume \(D(\xi) \leq \kappa(\xi + 1)^{-\alpha}\) for some \(\alpha>0,\kappa>0.\) For each radially symmetric initial data \(u_0 \in W^{1,\infty}(B_R(0))\) there exists \(M_{\star}(u_0)\) such that if \(M> M_{\star}(u_0)\) then (1) admits a classical solution \textit{blowing up in finite time}. \item On the other hand, if \(D(\xi) \geq \kappa,\) then for each radially symmetric initial data \(u_0 \in W^{1,\infty}(B_R(0))\) and for each \(M>0,\) (1) admits a global bounded classical solution. \end{itemize} The proof of finite time blow-up achieved through an analysis of the cumulated density function \(w(s,t) := \int_0^{\sqrt{s}} \rho u(\rho,t) \ d\rho, \ s \in [0,R^2]\) and a moment like functional \(\int_0^{R^2} s^{-\gamma}w(s,t) \ ds, \gamma>0.\) The proof of global existence consists of first achieving a uniform \(L^2\)-smallness of the signal gradient locally around the origin, following an idea recently employed in [\textit{J. Ahn} et al., Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. 33, No. 11, 2337--2360 (2023; \url{doi:10.1142/S0218202523400055})], and then by analyzing the evolution of the entropy by an appropriate domain splitting method.