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    Well-posedness for a class of phase-field systems modeling prostate cancer growth with fractional operators and general nonlinearities
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2021) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    This paper deals with a general system of equations and conditions arising from a mathematical model of prostate cancer growth with chemotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy that has been recently introduced and analyzed (see [P. Colli et al., Mathematical analysis and simulation study of a phase-field model of prostate cancer growth with chemotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy effects, Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. bf 30 (2020), 1253--1295]). The related system includes two evolutionary operator equations involving fractional powers of selfadjoint, nonnegative, unbounded linear operators having compact resolvents. Both equations contain nonlinearities and in particular the equation describing the dynamics of the tumor phase variable has the structure of a Allen--Cahn equation with double-well potential and additional nonlinearity depending also on the other variable, which represents the nutrient concentration. The equation for the nutrient concentration is nonlinear as well, with a term coupling both variables. For this system we design an existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence theory by setting up a careful analysis which allows the consideration of nonsmooth potentials and the treatment of continuous nonlinearities with general growth properties.
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    Analysis and optimal control theory for a phase field model of Caginalp type with thermal memory
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2021) Colli, Pierluigi; Signori, Andrea; Sprekels, Jürgen
    A nonlinear extension of the Caginalp phase field system is considered that takes thermal memory into account. The resulting model, which is a first-order approximation of a thermodynamically consistent system, is inspired by the theories developed by Green and Naghdi. Two equations, resulting from phase dynamics and the universal balance law for internal energy, are written in terms of the phase variable (representing a non-conserved order parameter) and the so-called thermal displacement, i.e., a primitive with respect to time of temperature. Existence and continuous dependence results are shown for weak and strong solutions to the corresponding initial-boundary value problem. Then, an optimal control problem is investigated for a suitable cost functional, in which two data act as controls, namely, the distributed heat source and the initial temperature. Fréchet differentiability between suitable Banach spaces is shown for the control-to-state operator, and meaningful first-order necessary optimality conditions are derived in terms of variational inequalities involving the adjoint variables. Eventually, characterizations of the optimal controls are given.