Stationary solutions of a free boundary problem modeling the growth of vascular tumors with a necrotic core

Abstract

In this paper, we present a rigorous mathematical analysis of a free boundary problem modeling the growth of a vascular solid tumor with a necrotic core. If the vascular system supplies the nutrient concentration $\sigma$ to the tumor at a rate $\beta$, then $\frac{\partial \sigma }{\partial \mathbf{n}}+\beta (\sigma -\bar{\sigma })=0$ holds on the tumor boundary, where $\mathbf{n}$ is the unit outward normal to the boundary and $\bar{\sigma }$ is the nutrient concentration outside the tumor. The living cells in the nonnecrotic region proliferate at a rate $\mu$. We show that for any given $\rho >0$, there exists a unique $R\in (\rho ,\infty )$ such that the corresponding radially symmetric solution solves the steady-state necrotic tumor system with necrotic core boundary $r=\rho$ and outer boundary $r=R$; moreover, there exist a positive integer $n^{\ast \ast }$ and a sequence of ${\mu }_n$, symmetry-breaking stationary solutions bifurcate from the radially symmetric stationary solution for each ${\mu }_n$ (even $n\ge n^{\ast \ast })$.

29 pages