Boundedness in a chemotaxis-haptotaxis model with nonlinear diffusion

Abstract: This article deals with an initial-boundary value problem for the coupled chemotaxis-haptotaxis system with nonlinear diffusion \begin{align*} u_t=&\nabla\cdot(D(u)\nabla u)-\chi\nabla\cdot(u\nabla v)-\xi\nabla\cdot(u\nabla w)+\mu u(1-u-w),\ v_t=&\Delta v-v+u,\ w_t=&-vw\end{align*} under homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions in a bounded smooth domain $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n$, $n=2, 3, 4$, where $\chi, \xi$ and $\mu$ are given nonnegative parameters. The diffusivity $D(u)$ is assumed to satisfy $D(u)\geq\delta u^{m-1}$ for all $u>0$ with some $\delta>0$. It is proved that for sufficiently regular initial data global bounded solutions exist whenever $m>2-\frac{2}{n}$. For the case of non-degenerate diffusion (i.e. $D(0)>0$) the solutions are classical; for the case of possibly degenerate diffusion ($D(0)\geq 0$), the existence of bounded weak solutions is shown.