This book contains all the papers presented at the NATO workshop on "Optical Switching in Low Dimensional Systems" held in Marbella, Spain from October 6th to 8th, 1988. Optical switching is a basic function for optical data processing, which is of technological interest because of its potential parallelism and its potential speed. Semiconductors which exhibit resonance enhanced optical nonlinearities in the frequency range close to the band edge are the most intensively studied materials for optical bistability and fast gate operation. Modern crystal growth techniques, particularly molecular beam epitaxy, allow the manufacture of semiconductor microstructures such as quantum wells, quantum wires and quantum dots in which the electrons are only free to move in two, one or zero dimensions, of the optically excited electron-hole pairs in these low respectively. The spatial confinement dimensional structures gives rise to an enhancement of the excitonic nonlinearities. Furthermore, the variations of the microstruture extensions, of the compositions, and of the doping offer great new flexibility in engineering the desired optical properties. Recently, organic chain molecules (such as polydiacetilene) which are different realizations of one dimensional electronic systems, have been shown also to have interesting optical nonlinearities. Both the development and study of optical and electro-optical devices, as well as experimental and theoretical investigations of the underlying optical nonlinearities, are contained in this book.

Inhalt
Switching Devices.- Integrated Quantum Well Switching Devices.- Intrinsic Optical Bistability and Collective Nonlinear Phenomena in Periodic Coupled Microstructures: Model Experiments.- Carrier Induced Effects of Quantum Well Structures and its Application to Optical Modulators and Optical Switches.- Optical Bistability and Nonlinear Switching in Quantum Well Laser Amplifiers.- Patterned Quantum Well Semiconductor Lasers.- High Injection Effects in Quantum Well Lasers.- Real and Virtual Charge Polarizations in DC Biased Low-Dimensional Semiconductor Structures.- Nonlinear Optical Properties of n-i-p-i and Hetero-n-i-p-i Structures.- Nonlinear Optical Properties of Organic Materials.- Excitonic Optical Nonlinearities in Polydiacetilene: The Mechanisms.- Cubic Nonlinear Optical Effects in Conjugated ID ?-Electron Systems.- High-Field Effects, Femtosecond Spectroscopy.- Optical Stark Shift in Quantum Wells.- Femtosecond Spectroscopy of Optically Excited Quantum Well Structures.- Femtosecond Dynamics of Semiconductor Nonlinearities: Theory and Experiments.- Stationary Solutions for the Excitonic Optical Stark Effect in Two and Three Dimensional Semiconductors.- Coherent Nonlinear Edge Dynamics in Semiconductor Quantum Wells.- Exciton Stark Shift : Biexcitonic Origin and Exciton Splitting.- Microcrystallites.- Quantum Size Effects and Photocarrier Dynamics in the Optical Nonlinearities of Semiconductor Microcrystallites.- Optical Nonlinearities and Femtosecond Dynamics of Quantum Confined CdSe Microcrystallites.- Enhanced Optical Nonlinearity and Very Rapid Response due to Excitons in Quantum Wells and Dots.- Excitons in Quantum Boxes.- Excitons in Low Dimensions.- Luminescence of GaAs-AlGaAs MQW Structures under Picosecond and Nanosecond Excitation.- Nonlinearities, Coherence and Dephasing in Layered GaSe and in CdSe Surface Layer.- Excitons in II-VI Compound Semiconductor Superlattices: A Range of Possibilities with ZnSe Based Heterostructures.- Biexcitons in ZnSe Quantum Wells.- Biexcitonic Nonlinearity in Quantum Wires.- Ultrafast Dynamics of Excitons in GaAs Single Quantum Wells.- Transient Optical Nonlinearities in Multiple Quantum Well Structures.- Excitons in Thin Films.- Band Structure Engineering of Non-Linear Response in Semiconductor Superlattices.- Plasma Nonlinearities in Low Dimensions.- Spectral Holeburning and Four-Wave Mixing in InGaAs/InP Quantum Wells.- Excitonic Enhancement of Stimulated Recombination in GaAs/AlGaAs Multiple Quantum Wells.- Carrier Relaxation and Recombination in (GaAs)/(AlAs) Short Period Superlattices.- Picosecond and Subpicosecond Luminescence of GaAs/GaAlAs Superlattices.- The Electron-Hole Plasma in Quasi Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Semiconductors.- Optical Spectroscopy on Two- and One-Dimensional Semiconductor Structures.- Participants.