Boundedness and large time behavior in a three-dimensional chemotaxis-Stokes system with nonlinear diffusion and general sensitivity

TL;DR

This paper proves the existence of globally bounded solutions and their stabilization over time for a complex three-dimensional chemotaxis-Stokes system with nonlinear diffusion and general sensitivities.

Contribution

It establishes global boundedness and large-time stabilization results for a 3D chemotaxis-fluid system with nonlinear cell diffusion and general chemotactic sensitivities.

Findings

Global weak solutions exist for diffusion exponent m > 7/6.

Solutions are bounded for all time.

Solutions tend to a homogeneous equilibrium as time approaches infinity.

Abstract

We consider a chemotaxis-fluid system involving nonlinear cell diffusion of porous medium type, signal consumption by cells, and rather general, possibly matrix-valued, chemotactic sensitivities. It is shown that if the corresponding diffusion exponent $m$ satisfies $m>7/6$, then for all reasonably regaular initial data an associated initial-boundary value problem in smoothly bounded three-dimensional domains possesses a globally defined weak solution which is bounded. Under a mild additional assumption on the signal consumption rate, it is moreover shown that any nontrivial of these solutions stabilizes toward a spatially homogeneous equilibrium in the large time limit.