Confined Electrons and Photons

The optical properties of semiconductors have played an important role since the identification of semiconductors as "small" bandgap materials in the thinies, due both to their fundamental interest as a class of solids baving specific optical propenies and to their many important applications. On the former aspect we can cite the fundamental edge absorption and its assignment to direct or indirect transitions, many-body effects as revealed by exciton formation and photoconductivity. On the latter aspect, large-scale applications sucb as LEDs and lasers, photovoltaic converters, photodetectors, electro-optics and non-linear optic devices, come to mind. The eighties saw a revitalization of the whole field due to the advent of heterostructures of lower-dimensionality, mainly two-dimensional quantum wells, which through their enhanced photon-matter interaction yielded new devices with unsurpassed performance. Although many of the basic phenomena were evidenced through the seventies, it was this impact on applications which in turn led to such a massive investment in fabrication tools, thanks to which many new structures and materials were studied, yielding funher advances in fundamental physics.

Klappentext

Proceedings of a NATO ASI held in Erice, Italy, held July 13-26, 1993

Zusammenfassung
Proceedings of a NATO ASI held in Erice, Italy, held July 13-26, 1993

Inhalt
Confined Electrons and Photons: A Summary:.- Basic Solid State Optics in Bulk and 2D Structures.- Dynamics of Optical Excitations in Semiconductors.- Optical Transitions, Excitons and Polaritons in Bulk and Low-Dimensional Semiconductor Structures.- Electron States in Biased Heterostructures.- Phonons and Electron-Phonon Interaction in Low-Dimensional Structures.- Excitonic Radiative Dynamics in Semiconductor Quantum Wells.- Superlattices and Quantum Wells in Organic Semiconductors: Excitons and Optical Non-linearities.- Intersubband Transitions in Quantum Wells.- Confined Electrons in 1D and 0D.- Principles of Electron Solid State Electron Optics.- Atomic-like Spectroscopy of Low Dimensional Electron Systems.- Inelastic Scattering and Thermalization in low-III-V Semiconductor Structures.- Synthesis and Spectroscopy of II-VI Quantum Dots: an Overview.- Prospects of High Efficiency Quantum Boxes obtained by direct epitaxial growth.- Confined Photons.- Atoms in Cavities.- Controlling Spontaneous Emission and Optical Microcavities.- Spontaneous Emission Control in Semiconductor Microcavities.- Strong Coupling in Semiconductor Microcavities.- Localization of Light in Disordered and Periodic Dielectrics.- Photonic Bloch Waves and Photonic Band Gaps.- Light Emission in Photonic Crystal Micro-Cavities.- Special Topics Applications.- Semiconductor Nanostructure lasers: Fundamentals and Fabrications.- Quantum Wells Optical Switching Devices.- High-efficiency, Narrow Spectrum Resonant Cavity Light Emitting Diodes.- Short Papers (Seminars and Selected Posters).- Spontaneous Emission Control in Planar Structures: Er3+ in Si/SO2 Microcavities.- Vacuum Rabi Splitting in a Semiconductor Microcavity.- Impurity Modes in One-Dimensional Periodic Systems: The Transition from PhotonicBandgaps to Microcavities.- Photonic Bandgap Calculations: Inward and Outward Integral Equations and the KKR method.- Soliton-Polariton Interaction near an Excitonic Resonance in Semiconductors.- Dynamics of Excitons and Electron-Hole Plasma Confined in Semiconductor Nanocrystals.- Coupled-Quantum Wells for Optical Modulation.- In-plane Electro-Optic Effect in a Quantum Well.- Reprinted Papers: Basics.- Aspects of Polaritons.- Interband Optical Transitions in Extremely Anisotropic Semiconductors.- Effect of Retarded Interaction on the Exciton Spectrum in One-Dimensional and Two-Dimensional Crystals.- On the Exciton Luminescence at Low temperatures: Importance of the Polariton Viewpoint.- Spatial and Spectral Features of Polariton Fluorescence.- Reprinted Papers: Confined Electrons.- Studies of Exciton Localization in Quantum-Well Structures by Nonlinear-Optical Techniques.- Excitonic Optical Nonlinearity and Exciton Dynamics in Semiconductor Quantum Dots.- Very Large Optical Nonlinearity of Semiconductor Microcrystallites.- Reprinted Papers: Confined Photons.- Spontaneous Emission Probabilities at Radiofrequencies.- Inhibited Spontaneous Emission.- Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid State Physics and Electronics.- Cavity Q.E.D.- Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics at Optical Frequencies.- Physics and Device Applications of Optical Microcavities.- Optical Processes in Microcavities.- Photon Number Squeezed States in Semiconductor Lasers.- Photonic Bandgap Structures.- Applications of Photonic Band gap Structures.- Contributors.