3.II.13B
Part II, 2007
The number density of a population of cells is . The cells produce a chemical whose concentration is and respond to it chemotactically. The equations governing and are
(i) Give a biological interpretation of each term in these equations, where you may assume that and are all positive.
(ii) Show that there is a steady-state solution that is stable to spatially invariant disturbances.
(iii) Analyse small, spatially-varying perturbations to the steady state that satisfy for any variable , and show that a chemotactic instability is possible if
(iv) Find the critical value of at which the instability first appears as is increased.