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Convergence to equilibrium in energy-reaction-diffusion systems using vector-valued functional inequalities : dedicated to Peter Markowich on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday
We discuss how the recently developed energy-dissipation methods for reaction-diffusion systems can be generalized to the non-isothermal case. For this we use concave entropies in terms of the densities of the species and the internal energy, with the important feature, that the equilibrium densities may depend on the internal energy. Using the log-Sobolev estimate and variants for lower-order entropies as well as estimates for the entropy production of the nonlinear reactions we give two methods to estimate the relative entropy by the total entropy production, namely a somewhat restrictive convexity method, which provides explicit decay rates, and a very general, but weaker compactness method.
An entropic gradient structure for Lindblad equations and GENERIC for quantum systems coupled to macroscopic models
We show that all Lindblad operators (i.e. generators of quantum semigroups) on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space satisfying the detailed balance condition with respect to the thermal equilibrium state can be written as a gradient system with respect to the relative entropy. We discuss also thermodynamically consistent couplings to macroscopic systems, either as damped Hamiltonian systems with constant temperature or as GENERIC systems.
Mathematical modeling of semiconductors: From quantum mechanics to devices
We discuss recent progress in the mathematical modeling of semiconductor devices. The central result of this paper is a combined quantum-classical model that self-consistently couples van Roosbroeck's drift-diffusion system for classical charge transport with a Lindblad-type quantum master equation. The coupling is shown to obey fundamental principles of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The appealing thermodynamic properties are shown to arise from the underlying mathematical structure of a damped Hamitlonian system, which is an isothermal version of so-called GENERIC systems. The evolution is governed by a Hamiltonian part and a gradient part involving a Poisson operator and an Onsager operator as geoemtric structures, respectively. Both parts are driven by the conjugate forces given in terms of the derivatives of a suitable free energy.