The existence and linear stability of periodic solution for a free boundary problem modeling tumor growth with a periodic supply of external nutrients

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a tumor growth model with periodic nutrient supply, establishing conditions for stability of solutions and identifying a critical parameter value for linear stability under perturbations.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the existence, stability, and bifurcation of periodic solutions in a tumor growth free boundary problem with periodic external nutrients.

Findings

Zero solution is globally stable if average nutrient supply exceeds a threshold.

Existence of a unique positive periodic solution when nutrient supply is below the threshold.

Identification of a critical parameter value for linear stability and instability.

Abstract

We study a free boundary problem modeling tumor growth with a T-periodic supply $\Phi(t)$ of external nutrients. The model contains two parameters $\mu$ and $\widetilde{\sigma}$. We first show that (i) zero radially symmetric solution is globally stable if and only if $\widetilde{\sigma}\ge \frac{1}{T} \int_{0}^{T} \Phi(t) d t$; (ii) If $\widetilde{\sigma}<\frac{1}{T} \int_{0}^{T} \Phi(t) d t$, then there exists a unique radially symmetric positive solution $\left(\sigma_{*}(r, t), p_{*}(r, t), R_{*}(t)\right)$ with period $T$ and it is a global attractor of all positive radially symmetric solutions for all $\mu>0$. These results are a perfect answer to open problems in Bai and Xu [Pac. J. Appl. Math. 2013(5), 217-223]. Then, considering non-radially symmetric perturbations, we prove that there exists a constant $\mu_{\ast}>0$ such that $\left(\sigma_{*}(r, t), p_{*}(r, t), R_{*}(t)\right)$ is linearly stable for $\mu<\mu_{\ast}$ and linearly unstable for $\mu>\mu_{\ast}$.