We consider the linear growth-fragmentation equation arising in the modelling of cell division or polymerisation processes. For constant coefficients, we prove that the dynamics converges to the steady state with an exponential rate. The control on the initial data uses an elaborate $L^1$-norm that seems to be necessary. It also reflects the main idea of the proof which is to use an anti-derivative of the solution. The main technical difficulty is related to the entropy dissipation rate which is too weak to produce a Poincaré inequality.
We consider the fragmentation equation $\dfrac{\partial}{\partial t}f (t, x) = --B(x)f (t, x) + \int\_{ y=x}^{ y=\infty} k(y, x)B(y)f (t, y)dy,$ and address the question of estimating the fragmentation parameters-i.e. the division rate $B(x)$ and the fragmentation kernel $k(y, x)$-from measurements of the size distribution $f (t, $\times$)$ at various times. This is a natural question for any application where the sizes of the particles are measured experimentally whereas the fragmentation rates are unknown, see for instance (Xue, Radford, Biophys. Journal, 2013) for amyloid fibril breakage. U…
The growth-fragmentation equation arises in many different contexts, ranging from cell division, protein polymerization, biopolymers, neurosciences etc. Direct observation of temporal dynamics being often difficult, it is of main interest to develop theoretical and numerical methods to recover reaction rates and parameters of the equation from indirect observation of the solution. Following the work done in (Perthame, Zubelli, 2006) and (Doumic, Perthame, Zubelli, 2009) for the specific case of the cell division equation, we address here the general question of recovering the fragmentation rat…
The objective is to prove the asynchronous exponential growth of the growth-fragmentation equation in large weighted $L^1$ spaces and under general assumptions on the coefficients. The key argument is the creation of moments for the solutions to the Cauchy problem, resulting from the unboundedness of the total fragmentation rate. It allows us to prove the quasi-compactness of the associated (rescaled) semigroup, which in turn provides the exponential convergence toward the projector on the Perron eigenfunction.
The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) On the one hand, the paper revisits the spectral analysis of semigroups in a general Banach space setting. It presents some new and more general versions, and provides comprehensible proofs, of classical results such as the spectral mapping theorem, some (quantified) Weyl's Theorems and the Krein-Rutman Theorem. Motivated by evolution PDE applications, the results apply to a wide and natural class of generators which split as a dissipative part plus a more regular part, without assuming any symmetric structure on the operators nor Hilbert structure on the …
A growth fragmentation equation with constant dislocation density measure is considered, in which growth and division rates balance each other. This leads to a simple example of equation where the so called Malthusian hypothesis $(M_+)$ of J. Bertoin and A. Watson (2016) is not necessarily satisfied. It is proved that when that happens, and as it was first suggested by these authors, no global non negative weak solution, satisfying some boundedness condition on several of its moments, exist. Non existence of local non negative solutions satisfying a similar condition, is proved to happen also.…
The small and large size behavior of stationary solutions to the fragmentation equation with size diffusion is investigated. It is shown that these solutions behave like stretched exponentials for large sizes, the exponent in the exponential being solely given by the behavior of the overall fragmentation rate at infinity. In contrast, the small size behavior is partially governed by the daughter fragmentation distribution and is at most linear, with possibly non-algebraic behavior. Explicit solutions are also provided for particular fragmentation coefficients.
We consider a linear integro-differential equation which arises to describe both aggregation-fragmentation processes and cell division. We prove the existence of a solution $(\lb,\U,ϕ)$ to the related eigenproblem. Such eigenelements are useful to study the long time asymptotic behaviour of solutions as well as the steady states when the equation is coupled with an ODE. Our study concerns a non-constant transport term that can vanish at $x=0,$ since it seems to be relevant to describe some biological processes like proteins aggregation. Non lower-bounded transport terms bring difficulties to f…
We study the asymptotic behavior of linear evolution equations of the type \partial_t g = Dg + Lg - λg, where L is the fragmentation operator, D is a differential operator, and λ is the largest eigenvalue of the operator Dg + Lg. In the case Dg = -\partial_x g, this equation is a rescaling of the growth-fragmentation equation, a model for cellular growth; in the case Dg = -x \partial_x g, it is known that λ = 2 and the equation is the self-similar fragmentation equation, closely related to the self-similar behavior of solutions of the fragmentation equation \partial_t f = Lf. By means of entro…
In a recent result by the authors (ref. [1]) it was proved that solutions of the self-similar fragmentation equation converge to equilibrium exponentially fast. This was done by showing a spectral gap in weighted $L^2$ spaces of the operator defining the time evolution. In the present work we prove that there is also a spectral gap in weighted $L^1$ spaces, thus extending exponential convergence to a larger set of initial conditions. The main tool is an extension result in ref. [4].
We are concerned with the long-time behavior of the growth-fragmentation equation. We prove fine estimates on the principal eigenfunctions of the growth-fragmentation operator, giving their first-order behavior close to 0 and $+\infty$. Using these estimates we prove a spectral gap result by following the technique in [Caceres, Canizo, Mischler 2011, JMPA], which implies that solutions decay to the equilibrium exponentially fast. The growth and fragmentation coefficients we consider are quite general, essentially only assumed to behave asymptotically like power laws.
We investigate a coagulation-fragmentation equation with boundary data, establishing the well-posedness of the initial value problem when the coagulation kernels are bounded at zero and showing existence of solutions for the singular kernels relevant in the applications. We determine the large time asymptotic behavior of solutions, proving that solutions converge exponentially fast to zero in the absence of fragmentation and stabilize toward an equilibrium if the boundary value satisfies a detailed balance condition. Incidentally, we obtain an improvement in the regularity of solutions by show…
The dynamics of the fragmentation equation with size diffusion is investigated when the size ranges in (0, $\infty$). The associated linear operator involves three terms and can be seen as a nonlocal perturbation of a Schr{ö}dinger operator. A Miyadera perturbation argument is used to prove that it is the generator of a positive, analytic semigroup on a weighted $L_1$-space. Moreover, if the overall fragmentation rate does not vanish at infinity, then there is a unique stationary solution with given mass. Assuming further that the overall fragmentation rate diverges to infinity for large sizes…
We study the mathematical properties of a model of cell division structured by two variables, the size and the size increment, in the case of a linear growth rate and a self-similar fragmentation kernel. We first show that one can construct a solution to the related two dimensional eigenproblem associated to the eigenvalue 1 from a solution of a certain one dimensional fixed point problem. Then we prove the existence and uniqueness of this fixed point in the appropriate $\mathrm{L}^1$ weighted space under general hypotheses on the division rate. Knowing such an eigenfunction proves useful as a…
The paper concerns the well-posedness and long-term asymptotics of growth--fragmentation equation with unbounded fragmentation rates and McKendrick--von Foerster boundary conditions. We provide three different methods of proving that there is a strongly continuous semigroup solution to the problem and show that it is a compact perturbation of the corresponding semigroup with a homogeneous boundary condition. This allows for transferring the results on the spectral gap available for the later semigroup to the one considered in the paper. We also provide sufficient and necessary conditions for t…
The growth-fragmentation equation models systems of particles that grow and split as time proceeds. An important question concerns the large time asymptotic of its solutions. Doumic and Escobedo ($2016$) observed that when growth is a linear function of the mass and fragmentations are homogeneous, the so-called Malthusian behaviour fails. In this work we further analyse the critical case by considering a piecewise linear growth, namely \begin{equation} c(x) = \begin{cases} a_{_-} x \quad \quad x < 1 \\ a_{_+} x \quad \quad x \geq 1, \end{cases} \end{equation} with $0 < a_{_+} < a_{_-}$. We giv…
We consider an age-size structured cell population model based on the cell cycle length. The model is described by a first order partial differential equation with initial-boundary conditions. Using the theory of semigroups of positive operators we establish new criteria for an asynchronous exponential growth of solutions to such equations. We discuss the question of exponential size growth of cells. We study in detail a constant size growth model and a model with target size division. We also present versions of the model when the population is heterogeneous.
We study coagulation-fragmentation equations inspired by a simple model proposed in fisheries science to explain data for the size distribution of schools of pelagic fish. Although the equations lack detailed balance and admit no $H$-theorem, we are able to develop a rather complete description of equilibrium profiles and large-time behavior, based on recent developments in complex function theory for Bernstein and Pick functions. In the large-population continuum limit, a scaling-invariant regime is reached in which all equilibria are determined by a single scaling profile. This universal pro…
Plasmids are autonomously replicating genetic elements in bacteria. At cell division plasmids are distributed among the two daughter cells. This gene transfer from one generation to the next is called vertical gene transfer. We study the dynamics of a bacterial population carrying plasmids and are in particular interested in the long-time distribution of plasmids. Starting with a model for a bacterial population structured by the discrete number of plasmids, we proceed to the continuum limit in order to derive a continuous model. The model incorporates plasmid reproduction, division and death …
