A nonlocal transport problem describing pore growth

Abstract

We study a nonlocal transport problem describing pore growth in a biological membrane exposed to a periodic electric potential, where the growth term is modified through the first moment of the solution $n_1(t)$. We show that for initial data $f_0$ with noncompact support it holds $n_1(t)\to \infty$ , whereas for $f_0$ with compact support the limit of $n_1$ depends sensitively on the data. For a broad class of initial data we additionally obtain $n_1\sim t^{\frac{1}{2}}$. In the case of a constant external potential we further prove that solutions converge to the self-similar solution having the same tail behaviour as $f_0$.