Singular limit of a chemotaxis model with indirect signal production and phenotype switching

Abstract

Convergence of solutions to a partially diffusive chemotaxis system with indirect signal production and phenotype switching is shown in a two-dimensional setting when the switching rate increases to infinity, thereby providing a rigorous justification of formal computations performed in the literature. The expected limit system being the classical parabolic–parabolic Keller–Segel system, the obtained convergence is restricted to a finite time interval for general initial conditions but valid for arbitrary bounded time intervals when the mass of the initial condition is appropriately small. Furthermore, if the solution to the limit system blows up in finite time, then neither of the two phenotypes in the partially diffusive system can be uniformly bounded with respect to the L₂-norm beyond that time.