| Abstract: | During fertilization of certain echinoderms, a long actin-filled tube is extended by the sperm towards the interior of the egg. This yields a parabolic free boundary problem, which differs from the classical one-phase Stefan problem by the presence of a convective term in the partial differential equation, and because the equilibrium interface condition θ(s(t),t) = 0 is here replaced by a kinetic law s′(t) = vθ(s(t),t). This problem is set in variational form and the existence of a solution is proved by means of a Faedo–Galerkin approximation procedure. |
