Andreas Unterreiter

• The thermal equilibrium state of a bipolar, isothermal quantum fluid confined to a bounded domain \(\Omega\subset I\!\!R^d,d=1,2\) or \( d=3\) is the minimizer of the total energy \({\mathcal E}_{\epsilon\lambda}\); \({\mathcal E}_{\epsilon\lambda}\) involves the squares of the scaled Planck's constant \(\epsilon\) and the scaled minimal Debye length \(\lambda\). In applications one frequently has \(\lambda^2\ll 1\). In these cases the zero-space-charge approximation is rigorously justified. As \(\lambda \to 0 \), the particle densities converge to the minimizer of a limiting quantum zero-space-charge functional exactly in those cases where the doping profile satisfies some compatibility conditions. Under natural additional assumptions on the internal energies one gets an differential-algebraic system for the limiting \((\lambda=0)\) particle densities, namely the quantum zero-space-charge model. The analysis of the subsequent limit \(\epsilon \to 0\) exhibits the importance of quantum gaps. The semiclassical zero-space-charge model is, for small \(\epsilon\), a reasonable approximation of the quantum model if and only if the quantum gap vanishes. The simultaneous limit \(\epsilon =\lambda \to 0\) is analyzed.