Strict separation and numerical approximation for a non-local Cahn-Hilliard equation with single-well potential

TL;DR

This paper establishes existence, uniqueness, and strict separation properties for a non-local Cahn-Hilliard equation with singular potential, and proposes a stable finite element scheme validated by simulations.

Contribution

It provides the first proof of the separation property for this class of non-local Cahn-Hilliard equations with singular potential.

Findings

Existence and uniqueness of weak solutions for dimensions up to 3.

Proof of strict separation property in three dimensions.

A stable finite element approximation validated by simulations.

Abstract

In this paper we study a non-local Cahn-Hilliard equation with singular single-well potential and degenerate mobility. This results as a particular case of a more general model derived for a binary, saturated, closed and incompressible mixture, composed by a tumor phase and a healthy phase, evolving in a bounded domain. The general system couples a Darcy-type evolution for the average velocity field with a convective reaction-diffusion type evolution for the nutrient concentration and a non-local convective Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor phase. The main mathematical difficulties are related to the proof of the separation property for the tumor phase in the Cahn-Hilliard equation: up to our knowledge, such problem is indeed open in the literature. For this reason, in the present contribution we restrict the analytical study to the Cahn-Hilliard equation only. For the non-local Cahn- Hilliard equation with singular single-well potential and degenerate mobility, we study the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions for spatial dimensions $d\leq 3$. After showing existence, we prove the strict separation property in three spatial dimensions, implying the same property also for lower spatial dimensions, which opens the way to the proof of uniqueness of solutions. Finally, we propose a well posed and gradient stable continuous finite element approximation of the model for $d\leq 3$, which preserves the physical properties of the continuos solution and which is computationally efficient, and we show simulation results in two spatial dimensions which prove the consistency of the proposed scheme and which describe the phase ordering dynamics associated to the system.