Abstract
The Peierls-Boltzmann transport equation for phonons, which was re-formulated and modified in a previous paper, is extended to be applicable to arbitrary interactions and phonon processes. As a rule, it turns out that only two types of steady state solutions are possible: hysteresis and threshold. These two solutions reveal the possibility of “transport phase transitions”, i. e. a transition from the “thermodynamic” branch to a “nonthermodynamic” one via a cumulative excitation. It is shown that both the threshold and the hysteresis situation exhibit pronounced analogies to phase transitions in thermal equilibrium. The dependence of the steady states from the relevant parameters is discussed.
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