An asymptotic-preserving scheme for the semiconductor Boltzmann equation toward the energy-transport limit

We design an asymptotic-preserving scheme for the semiconductor Boltzmann equation which leads to an energy-transport system for electron mass and energy as mean free path goes to zero. As opposed to the classical drift-diffusion limit where the stiff collisions are all in one scale, new difficulties arise in the two-scale stiff collision terms because the simple BGK penalization [15] fails to drive the solution to the correct limit. We propose to set up a spatially dependent threshold on the penalization of the stiffer collision operator such that the evolution of the solution resembles a Hilbert expansion at the continuous level. Formal asymptotic analysis and numerical results confirm the efficiency and accuracy of our scheme. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.