Search

In this paper, we study a system of three evolutionary operator equations involving fractional powers of selfadjoint, monotone, unbounded, linear operators having compact resolvents. This system constitutes a generalized and relaxed version of a phase field system of Cahn-Hilliard type modelling tumor growth that has originally been proposed in Hawkins-Daarud et al. (Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Eng. 28 (2012), 3-24). The original phase field system and certain relaxed versions thereof have been studied in recent papers co-authored by the present authors and E. Rocca. The model consists of a Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction, coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for a function S representing the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. Effects due to fluid motion are neglected. Motivated by the possibility that the diffusional regimes governing the evolution of the different constituents of the model may be of different (e.g., fractional) type, the present authors studied in a recent note a generalization of the systems investigated in the abovementioned works. Under rather general assumptions, well-posedness and regularity results have been shown. In particular, by writing the equation governing the evolution of the chemical potential in the form of a general variational inequality, also singular or nonsmooth contributions of logarithmic or of double obstacle type to the energy density could be admitted. In this note, we perform an asymptotic analysis of the governing system as two (small) relaxation parameters approach zero separately and simultaneously. Corresponding well-posedness and regularity results are established for the respective cases; in particular, we give a detailed discussion which assumptions on the admissible nonlinearities have to be postulated in each of the occurring cases., Comment: Key words: fractional operators, Cahn-Hilliard systems, well-posedness, regularity of solutions, tumor growth models, asymptotic analysis

In the recent paper `Well-posedness and regularity for a generalized fractional Cahn-Hilliard system' (Atti Accad. Naz. Lincei Rend. Lincei Mat. Appl. 30 (2019), 437-478 -- see also arXiv:1804.11290), the same authors have studied viscous and nonviscous Cahn-Hilliard systems of two operator equations in which nonlinearities of double-well type, like regular or logarithmic potentials, as well as nonsmooth potentials with indicator functions, were admitted. The operators appearing in the system equations are fractional powers $A^{2r}$ and $B^{2\sigma}$ (in the spectral sense) of general linear operators $A$ and $B$, which are densely defined, unbounded, selfadjoint, and monotone in the Hilbert space $L^2(\Omega)$, for some bounded and smooth domain $\Omega\subset{\mathbb{R}}^3$, and have compact resolvents. Existence, uniqueness, and regularity results have been proved in the quoted paper. Here, in the case of the viscous system, we analyze the asymptotic behavior of the solution as the parameter $\sigma$ appearing in the operator $B^{2\sigma}$ decreasingly tends to zero. We prove convergence to a phase relaxation problem at the limit, and we also investigate this limiting problem, in which an additional term containing the projection of the phase variable on the kernel of $B$ appears., Comment: Key words: fractional operators, Cahn-Hilliard systems, asymptotic analysis

In this paper, we study the distributed optimal control of a system of three evolutionary equations involving fractional powers of three self-adjoint, monotone, unbounded linear operators having compact resolvents. The system is a generalization of a Cahn&ndash, Hilliard type phase field system modeling tumor growth that has been proposed by Hawkins&ndash, Daarud, van der Zee and Oden. The aim of the control process, which could be realized by either administering a drug or monitoring the nutrition, is to keep the tumor cell fraction under control while avoiding possible harm for the patient. In contrast to previous studies, in which the occurring unbounded operators governing the diffusional regimes were all given by the Laplacian with zero Neumann boundary conditions, the operators may in our case be different, more generally, we consider systems with fractional powers of the type that were studied in a recent work by the present authors. In our analysis, we show the Fr&eacute, chet differentiability of the associated control-to-state operator, establish the existence of solutions to the associated adjoint system, and derive the first-order necessary conditions of optimality for a cost functional of tracking type.

In this contribution, we deal with the longtime behavior of the solutions to the fractional variant of the Cahn-Hilliard system, with possibly singular potentials, that we have recently investigated in the paper `Well-posedness and regularity for a generalized fractional Cahn-Hilliard system' (see arXiv:1804.11290). More precisely, we study the omega-limit of the phase parameter and characterize it completely. Our characterization depends on the first eigenvalue of one of the operators involved: if it is positive, then the chemical potential vanishes at infinity and every element of the omega-limit is a stationary solution to the phase equation; if, instead, the first eigenvalue is 0, then every element of the omega-limit satisfies a problem containing a real function related to the chemical potential. Such a function is nonunique and time dependent, in general, as we show by an example. However, we give sufficient conditions in order that this function be uniquely determined and constant., Comment: Key words: Fractional operators, Cahn-Hilliard systems, longtime behavior

The paper arXiv:1804.11290 contains well-posedness and regularity results for a system of evolutionary operator equations having the structure of a Cahn-Hilliard system. The operators appearing in the system equations were fractional versions in the spectral sense of general linear operators A and B having compact resolvents and are densely defined, unbounded, selfadjoint, and monotone in a Hilbert space of functions defined in a smooth domain. The associated double-well potentials driving the phase separation process modeled by the Cahn-Hilliard system could be of a very general type that includes standard physically meaningful cases such as polynomial, logarithmic, and double obstacle nonlinearities. In the subsequent paper arXiv:1807.03218, an analysis of distributed optimal control problems was performed for such evolutionary systems, where only the differentiable case of certain polynomial and logarithmic double-well potentials could be admitted. Results concerning existence of optimizers and first-order necessary optimality conditions were derived. In the present paper, we complement these results by studying a distributed control problem for such evolutionary systems in the case of nondifferentiable nonlinearities of double obstacle type. For such nonlinearities, it is well known that the standard constraint qualifications cannot be applied to construct appropriate Lagrange multipliers. To overcome this difficulty, we follow here the so-called "deep quench" method. We first give a general convergence analysis of the deep quench approximation that includes an error estimate and then demonstrate that its use leads in the double obstacle case to appropriate first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint state system., Key words: Fractional operators, Cahn-Hilliard systems, optimal control, double obstacles, necessary optimality conditions

In the recent paper `Well-posedness and regularity for a generalized fractional Cahn-Hilliard system' (arXiv:1804.11290) by the same authors, general well-posedness results have been established for a a class of evolutionary systems of two equations having the structure of a viscous Cahn-Hilliard system, in which nonlinearities of double-well type occur. The operators appearing in the system equations are fractional versions in the spectral sense of general linear operators A,B having compact resolvents, which are densely defined, unbounded, selfadjoint, and monotone in a Hilbert space of functions defined in a smooth domain. In this work we complement the results given in arXiv:1804.11290 by studying a distributed control problem for this evolutionary system. The main difficulty in the analysis is to establish a rigorous Frechet differentiability result for the associated control-to-state mapping. This seems only to be possible if the state stays bounded, which, in turn, makes it necessary to postulate an additional global boundedness assumption. One typical situation, in which this assumption is satisfied, arises when B is the negative Laplacian with zero Dirichlet boundary conditions and the nonlinearity is smooth with polynomial growth of at most order four. Also a case with logarithmic nonlinearity can be handled. Under the global boundedness assumption, we establish existence and first-order necessary optimality conditions for the optimal control problem in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint state system., Key words: fractional operators, Cahn-Hilliard systems, optimal control, necessary optimality conditions

We investigate a nonstandard phase field model of Cahn-Hilliard type. The model describes two-species phase segregation and consists of a system of two highly nonlinearly coupled PDEs. It has been studied recently in the papers arXiv:1103.4585 and arXiv:1109.3303 for the case of homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. In this paper, we investigate the case that the boundary condition for one of the unknowns of the system is of third kind and nonhomogeneous. For the resulting system, we show well-posedness, and we study optimal boundary control problems. Existence of optimal controls is shown, and the first-order necessary optimality conditions are derived. Owing to the strong nonlinear couplings in the PDE system, standard arguments of optimal control theory do not apply directly, although the control constraints and the cost functional will be of standard type., Key words: nonlinear phase field systems, Cahn-Hilliard systems, parabolic systems, optimal boundary control, first-order necessary optimality conditions. The interested reader can also see the preprint arXiv:1106.3668 where a distributed optimal control problem is studied for a similar system. arXiv admin note: significant text overlap with arXiv:1106.3668