Abstract
This paper reviews the theory needed to describe the near bandgap optical properties of semiconductor quantum-well structures. After brief introductions of the basic concepts of electronic banstructures, quantum confinement effects, and optical susceptibility, a systematic derivation of the semiconductor Bloch equations is presented. In the regime of linear response the excitonic and Coulombic enhancement effects in the absorption spectra of direct-gap semiconductor structures are discussed. Nonlinear phenomena, such as absorption saturation, gap renormalization and excitation induced dephasing are analyzed using a systematic scheme of approximations. The resulting nonlinear semiconductor theory is self-consistently combined with solutions of Maxwell’s equations to compute the optical properties of excitonic semiconductor microcavity systems.
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References
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Kira, M. et al., (1997), Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 5170 and Kira, M., F. Jahnke and S.W. Koch, to be published.
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© 1999 Springer-Verlag
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Koch, S.W. (1999). Microscopic theory of the optical semiconductor response near the fundamental absorption edge. In: Benisty, H., Weisbuch, C., Polytechnique, É., Gérard, JM., Houdré, R., Rarity, J. (eds) Confined Photon Systems. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 531. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0104381
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0104381
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