ANALYSIS OF A CLASS OF DEGENERATE REACTION-DIFFUSION SYSTEMS AND THE BIDOMAIN MODEL OF CARDIAC TISSUE

Abstract

We prove well-posedness (existence and uniqueness) results for a class of degenerate reaction-diffusion systems. A prototype system belonging to this class is provided by the bidomain model, which is frequently used to study and simulate electrophysiological waves in cardiac tissue. The existence result, which constitutes the main thrust of this paper, is proved by means of a nondegenerate approximation system, the Faedo-Galerkin method, and the compactness method.