Large global solutions of the parabolic-parabolic Keller-Segel system in higher dimensions

Abstract

We study the global existence of the parabolic-parabolic Keller-Segel system in $\R^d , d \ge 2$. We prove that initial data of arbitrary size give rise to global solutions provided the diffusion parameter $\tau$ is large enough in the equation for the chemoattractant. This fact was observed before in the two-dimensional case by Biler, Guerra \& Karch (2015) and Corrias, Escobedo \& Matos (2014). Our analysis improves earlier results and extends them to any dimension $d \ge 3$. Our size conditions on the initial data for the global existence of solutions seem to be optimal, up to a logarithmic factor in $\tau$, when $\tau>>1$: we illustrate this fact by introducing two toy models, both consisting of systems of two parabolic equations, obtained after a slight modification of the nonlinearity of the usual Keller-Segel system. For these toy models, we establish in a companion paper [4] finite time blowup for a class of large solutions.