Global existence and large time behavior of solutions for the bipolar quantum hydrodynamic models in the quarter plane

In this paper, we discuss a bipolar transient quantum hydrodynamic model for charge density, current density, and electric field in the quarter plane. This model takes the form of a classical Euler–Poisson system with the additional dispersion terms caused by the quantum (Bohn) potential. We show global existence of smooth solutions for the initial boundary value problem when the initial data are near the nonlinear diffusive waves, which are different from the steady state. We also show the asymptotical behavior of the global smooth solution towards the nonlinear diffusive waves and obtain the algebraic decay rates. These results are proved by elaborate energy methods. Finally, using the Fourier analysis, we obtain the optimal convergence rates of the solutions towards the nonlinear diffusion waves. As far as we known, this is the first result about the initial boundary value problem of the one‐dimensional bipolar quantum hydrodynamic model in the quarter plane. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.