Optical Properties of Semiconductor Quantum Dots

An important step towards realizing the advantages of quantum dots in electro-optic applications is to understand the excitation dependences of optical properties. This paper discusses results obtained using a microscopic theory. The calculations uncovered complicated carrier density and electronic structure influences on absorption, gain and refractive index that can be attributed to a delicate balancing of electronic-structure and many-body effects in a coupled quantum-dot-quantum-well system.