A critical nonlinearity for blow-up in a higher-dimensional chemotaxis system with indirect signal production

Abstract

The Neumann problem in balls $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\in\{3,4\}$, for the chemotaxis system \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} u_t = \Delta u - \nabla \cdot (u\nabla v), \\[1mm] 0 = \Delta v - \mu^{(w)}(t) + w, \quad \mu^{(w)}(t) = \frac{1}{|\Omega|}\int_\Omega w \\[1mm] w_t = \Delta w - w + f(u), \end{array} \right. \end{equation*} is considered. Under the assumption that $f\in C^1([0,\infty))$ is such that $f(\xi) \ge k\xi^\sigma$ for all $\xi\ge 0$ and some $k>0$ and $\sigma>\frac{4}{n}$, it is shown that finite-time blow-up occurs for some radially symmetric solutions.