Space dependent adhesion forces mediated by transient elastic linkages: New convergence and global existence results

Abstract

In the first part of this work we show the convergence with respect to an asymptotic parameter ε of a delayed heat equation. It represents a mathematical extension of works considered previously by the authors [14–16]. Namely, this is the first result involving delay operators approximating protein linkages coupled with a spatial elliptic second order operator. For the sake of simplicity we choose the Laplace operator, although more general results could be derived. The main arguments are (i) new energy estimates and (ii) a stability result extended from the previous work to this more involved context. They allow to prove convergence of the delay operator to a friction term together with the Laplace operator in the same asymptotic regime considered without the space dependence in [14]. In a second part we extend fixed-point results for the fully non-linear model introduced in [16] and prove global existence in time. This shows that the blow-up scenario observed previously does not occur. Since the latter result was interpreted as a rupture of adhesion forces, we discuss the possibility of bond breaking both from the analytic and numerical point of view.