Study of a degenerate reaction-diffusion system arising in particle dynamics with aggregation effects

Abstract: In this paper we are interested in a degenerate parabolic system of reaction-diffusion equations arising in biology when studying cell adhesion at the protein level. In this modeling the unknown is the couple of the distribution laws of the freely diffusing proteins and of the fixed ones. Under sufficient conditions on the aggregation and unbinding probabilities, we prove the existence of solution of the considered system, as well as their positivity, boundedness and uniqueness. Moreover, we discuss the stability of the equilibrium solution. Finally, we show that the simpler and particular choice of an affine aggregation function and of a constant unbinding probability do not lead to pattern formation as expected in the application. These analytical results are also supported by some numerical simulation.