Convergence to global equilibrium for the semiconductor Boltzmann equation

Abstract: The Boltzmann equation describing the transport of electrons in semiconductor devices with an external electrostatic potential is considered when the spatial variable is in a torus and the wave vector is in the Brillouin zone. We prove the exponential time decay of solutions towards the global equilibrium in a weighted $L^2$ space. Our result holds for wide classes of energy functions of electrons and external electrostatic potentials, and the estimates on the rate of convergence are explicit and constructive. We remove the close-to-equilibrium assumption on the initial datum and the parabolic band approximation assumption that were required in previous works. The technique is based on the construction of a suitable highly non-linear Lyapunov functional by modifying the relative entropy. The analysis benefits from uniform bounds for the solution in terms of the global equilibrium.