Bifurcation solutions of a free boundary problem modeling tumor growth with angiogenesis.

Abstract In this paper we study bifurcation solutions from the unique radial solution of a free boundary problem modeling stationary state of tumors with angiogenesis. This model comprises two elliptic equations describing the distribution of the nutrient concentration σ = σ (x) and the inner pressure p = p (x). Unlike similar tumor models that have been intensively studied in the literature where Dirichlet boundary condition for σ is imposed, in this model the boundary condition for σ is a Robin boundary condition. Existence and uniqueness of a radial solution of this model have been successfully proved in a recently published paper [20]. In this paper we study existence of nonradial solutions by using the bifurcation method. Let { γ k } k = 2 ∞ be the sequence of eigenvalues of the linearized problem. We prove that there exists a positive integer k ⁎ ⩾ 2 such that in the two dimension case for any k ⩾ k ⁎ , γ k is a bifurcation point, and in the three dimension case for any even k ⩾ k ⁎ , γ k is also a bifurcation point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]