Self polarization and traveling wave in a model for cell crawling migration

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In this paper, we prove the existence of traveling wave solutions for an incompressible Darcy's free boundary problem recently introduced in [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b6">6</xref>] to describe cell motility. This free boundary problem involves a nonlinear destabilizing term in the boundary condition which describes the active character of the cell cytoskeleton. By using two different methods, a constructive method via a graph analysis and a local bifurcation method, we prove that traveling wave solutions exist when the destabilizing term is strong enough.</p>