When do Keller-Segel systems with heterogeneous logistic sources admit generalized solutions?

Abstract

We construct global generalized solutions to the chemotaxis system \begin{align*} \begin{cases} u_t = \Delta u - \nabla \cdot (u \nabla v) + \lambda(x) u - \mu(x) u^\kappa,\\ v_t = \Delta v - v + u \end{cases} \end{align*} in smooth, bounded domains $\Omega \subset \mathbb R^n$, $n \geq 2$, for certain choices of $\lambda, \mu$ and $\kappa$. Here, inter alia, the selections $\mu(x) = |x|^\alpha$ with $\alpha < 2$ and $\kappa = 2$as well as $\mu \equiv \mu_1 > 0$ and $\kappa > \min\{\frac{2n-2}{n}, \frac{2n+4}{n+4}\}$ are admissible (in both cases for any sufficiently smooth $\lambda$). While the former case appears to be novel in general, in the two- and three-dimensional setting, the latter improves on a recent result by Winkler (Adv. Nonlinear Anal. 9 (2019), no. 1, 526-566), where the condition $\kappa > \frac{2n+4}{n+4}$ has been imposed. In particular, for $n = 2$, our result shows that taking any $\kappa > 1$ suffices to exclude the possibility of collapse into a persistent Dirac distribution.