Abstract : We study the global existence of the parabolic-parabolic Keller–Segel system in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$. We prove that initial data of arbitrary size give rise to global solutions provided the diffusion parameter $\tau$ is large enough in the equation for the chemoattractant. This fact was observed before in the two-dimensional case by Biler, Guerra and Karch (2015) and Corrias, Escobedo and Matos (2014). Our analysis improves earlier results and extends them to any dimension d ≥ 3. Our size conditions on the initial data for the global existence of solutions seem to be optimal, up to a logarithmic factor in $\tau$ , when $\tau\gg 1$: we illustrate this fact by introducing two toy models, both consisting of systems of two parabolic equations, obtained after a slight modification of the nonlinearity of the usual Keller–Segel system. For these toy models, we establish in a companion paper finite time blowup for a class of large solutions.

Keywords : chemotaxis; well-posedness