Uniform \(L^p\) Estimates for Solutions to the Inhomogeneous 2D Navier–Stokes Equations and Application to a Chemotaxis–Fluid System with Local Sensing

The chemotaxis-Navier–Stokes system

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{rcl} n_t+u\cdot \nabla n & =& \Delta \big (n c^{-\alpha } \big ), \\ c_t+ u\cdot \nabla c & =& \Delta c -nc,\\ u_t + (u\cdot \nabla ) u & =& \Delta u+\nabla P + n\nabla \Phi , \qquad \nabla \cdot u=0, \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

modelling the behavior of aerobic bacteria in a fluid drop, is considered in a smoothly bounded domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb R^2\). For all \(\alpha > 0\) and all sufficiently regular \(\Phi \), we construct global classical solutions and thereby extend recent results for the fluid-free analogue to the system coupled to a Navier–Stokes system. As a crucial new challenge, our analysis requires a priori estimates for u at a point in the proof when knowledge about n is essentially limited to the observation that the mass is conserved. To overcome this problem, we also prove new uniform-in-time \(L^p\) estimates for solutions to the inhomogeneous Navier–Stokes equations merely depending on the space-time \(L^2\) norm of the force term raised to an arbitrary small power.