Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 342 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take the physical diffusion and consumption constants . Use the travelling wave coordinate , with . Then and . The original PDF has the bacterial drift flux : the TeX transcription's is erroneous. Substituting the logarithmic chemotactic sensitivity givesPrimes here denote differentiation with respect to . The second equation already shows that nutrient increases towards the front whenever the bacterial density is positive. For the positive band, at every finite , so division by is legitimate, despite its zero limit far behind.
Integrating the first equation once giveswith constant . For a localized band with no bacterial flux at infinity, and its flux terms vanish ahead, so . Equivalently the laboratory flux equals . The Keller--Segel model then has the useful first-order reductionThe far-field conditions choose this zero-flux integration constant; it should not be imposed for an arbitrary nonlocalized travelling solution. We solve its positive localized branch in the next part.