Formal derivation of quantum drift-diffusion equations with spin-orbit interaction (Q2140233)

The authors of this paper consider quantum drift-diffusion mathematical models for a two-dimensional electron gas with spin-orbit interactions of Rashba type. These models contain equations which are formally derived from a collisional Wigner equation. The motion of the confined electrons in the \((x_1,x_2)\)-plane is governed by the von Neumann equation for the density operator \(\hat{\rho}(t)\), \(i\varepsilon \tau_0\partial_t\hat{\rho}= [\mathcal{H}_{\varepsilon },\hat{\rho}]\), where \(\mathcal{H}_{\varepsilon }\) is the scaled Hamiltonian. This equation can be transformed to the Wigner equation \(\tau_0\partial_tW+\mathcal{T}W=0\) (\(t>0\)), where \(\mathcal{T}W\) is the transport operator. The particle collisions are modeled by a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) type operator \(\tau_0\partial_tW+\mathcal{T}W = \tau^{-1}(\mathcal{M}(N)-W)\), \(t>0\), where \(\tau >0\) is the scaled relaxation time, \(\mathcal{M}(N)\) is the so-called quantum Maxwellian, which minimizes the quantum free energy under the constraint of a given density matrix \(N = \langle W\rangle \). This describes the relaxation of the electron gas to a local equilibrium that is given by the quantum maximum entropy principle. A Chapman-Enskog procedure leads up to first order in the relaxation time to a system of nonlocal quantum drift-diffusion equations. Local equations including the Bohm potential are obtained in the semiclassical expansion up to second order in the scaled Planck constant. The first result here concerns the nonlocal quantum-spin model, i.e. if \(W\) is a solution to the Wigner-Boltzmann equation, then, at first order in \(\tau \), the Pauli components of \(N\) solve some very sofisticated evolution equations. The second result concerns the local quantum-spin model. The authors assert that the main novelty of the present work is that ``all spin components are considered, while in the previous models are considered only the special spin directions''.