Abstract

Semiconductors are known to show in the band-gap region relative large changes of their optical properties with increasing light intensity. These changes are due to the creation of electron–hole pairs, which modify by band filling the intraband and interband contributions to the complex optical dielectric function. Most important, with increasing concentration of electron–hole pairs, the band gap shrinks, and the Coulomb forces are strongly reduced so that excitonic effects disappear. The theoretical description of these phenomena in three- and quasi-two-dimensional semiconductors is reviewed.

© 1985 Optical Society of America

Room-temperature excitonic nonlinear-optical effects in semiconductor quantum-well structures

D. S. Chemla and D. A. B. Miller
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2(7) 1155-1173 (1985)

Optical nonlinearity, bistability, and signal processing in semiconductors

N. Peyghambarian and H. M. Gibbs
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2(7) 1215-1227 (1985)

Simplified calculations of the optical spectra of two- and three-dimensional laser-excited semiconductors

C. Ell, R. Blank, S. Benner, and H. Haug
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6(11) 2006-2012 (1989)

Hot carrier relaxation and exciton screening in CuCl

A. Antonetti, D. Hulin, A. Migus, A. Mysyrowicz, and L. L. Chase
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2(7) 1197-1203 (1985)

Studies of exciton localization in quantum-well structures by nonlinear-optical techniques

J. Hegarty and M. D. Sturge
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2(7) 1143-1154 (1985)