Energy-transport models for spin transport in ferromagnetic semiconductors

Explicit energy-transport equations for the spinorial carrier transport in ferromagnetic semiconductors are calculated from a general spin energy-transport system that was derived by Ben Abdallah and El Hajj from a spinorial Boltzmann equation. The novelty of our approach are the simplifying assumptions leading to explicit models which extend both spin drift-diffusion and semiclassical energy-transport equations. The explicit models allow us to examine the interplay between the spin and charge degrees of freedom. In particular, the monotonicity of the entropy (or free energy) and gradient estimates are shown for these models and the existence of weak solutions to a time-discrete version of one of the models is proved, using novel truncation arguments. Numerical experiments in one-dimensional multilayer structures using a finite-volume discretization illustrate the effect of the temperature and the polarization parameter.