STUDY OF BALANCE-EQUATIONS FOR HOT-ELECTRON TRANSPORT IN AN ARBITRARYENERGY-BAND(III)

By choosing an electron gas resting instead of drifting in the laborat ory coordinate system as the initial state, the first-order perturbati on calculation of the previous paper (Part II) is revised and extended to include the higher-order field corrections in the expression for t he frictional forces and the energy transfer rates. The final expressi ons are formally the same as those in first order in the electric fiel d, but the distribution functions of electrons appearing in them are d efined by different expressions. The problems relative to the distribu tion function are discussed in detail and a new closed expression for the distribution function is obtained. The nonlinear impurity-limited resistance of a strongly degenerate electron gas is computed numerical ly. The result calculated by using the new expression for the distribu tion function is quite different from that using the displaced Fermi f unction when the electric field is sufficiently high.