Hele-Shaw flow as a singular limit of a Keller-Segel system with nonlinear diffusion

Abstract

We study a singular limit of the classical parabolic-elliptic Patlak-Keller-Segel (PKS) model for chemotaxis with non linear diffusion. The main result is the \(\Gamma \) convergence of the corresponding energy functional toward the perimeter functional. Following recent work on this topic, we then prove that under an energy convergence assumption, the solution of the PKS model converges to a solution of the Hele-Shaw free boundary problem with surface tension, which describes the evolution of the interface separating regions with high density from those with low density. This result complements a recent work by the author with I. Kim and Y. Wu, in which the same free boundary problem is derived from the congested PKS model (which includes a density constraint \(\rho \le 1\) and a pressure term): It shows that the congestion constraint is not necessary to observe phase separation and surface tension phenomena.