Chemotaxis Models with Nonlinear/Porous Medium Diffusion, Consumption, and Logistic source on $\mathbb{R}^N$: I. Global Solvability and Boundedness

Abstract

This series of papers is concerned with the global solvability, boundedness, regularity, and uniqueness of weak solutions to the following parabolic-parabolic chemotaxis system with a logistic source and chemical consumption: \begin{equation*} \begin{cases} u_t = m\nabla\cdot \left((\eps+u)^{m-1}\nabla u\right) - \chi \nabla \cdot (u \nabla v) + u(a - b u), & \text{ in } (0,\infty)\times\mathbb{R}^N, \\ v_t = \Delta v - uv, & \text{ in } (0,\infty)\times\mathbb{R}^N, \end{cases} \end{equation*} where $m > 1$ and $\eps \geq 0$. The present paper focuses on the global solvability and boundedness of weak solutions. For general bounded initial data, which may be non-integrable, we prove the existence of global weak solutions that remain uniformly bounded for all times. The proof relies on deriving local $L^p$ estimates that are uniform in time via a new continuity-type argument and obtaining $L^\infty$ bounds using Moser's iteration; all of these estimates are uniform as $\eps\to0$. In part II, we will study the regularity and uniqueness of weak solutions.