Well-posedness and exponential equilibration of a volume-surface reaction-diffusion system with nonlinear boundary coupling

Abstract: We consider a model system consisting of two reaction-diffusion equations, where one species diffuses in a volume while the other species diffuses on the surface which surrounds the volume. The two equations are coupled via a nonlinear reversible Robin-type boundary condition for the volume species and a matching reversible source term for the boundary species. As a consequence of the coupling, the total mass of the two species is conserved. The considered system is motivated for instance by models for asymmetric stem cell division. Firstly we prove the existence of a unique weak solution via an iterative method of converging upper and lower solutions to overcome the difficulties of the nonlinear boundary terms. Secondly, our main result shows explicit exponential convergence to equilibrium via an entropy method after deriving a suitable entropy entropy-dissipation estimate for the considered nonlinear volume-surface reaction-diffusion system.