This paper focuses on recent results on the optical properties of self-assembled quantum dots involving type-I InGaAs/GaAs and type-II InP/GaAs interfaces. In the first part, we focus on the InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots, that were used to study the influence of a two-dimensional electron gas on the optical emission of single quantum dots. In the second part, we present the results on type-II InP/GaAs quantum dots. In this system, we observed an experimental evidence indicating that the model used to interpret the blue shift of the type-II quantum well optical emission cannot be applied to type-II quantum dots.

Photoluminescence (PL) and excitation PL measurements have been performed at different temperatures in a number of lattice-matched GaAs/In0.49Ga0.51P quantum wells, where the uctuations of the potential energy are comparable with the thermal energy of the photocreated carriers. Two samples with different well widths allow to observe a series of anomalous e ects in their optical response. The observed effects are related to the disorder in the interface, characterizing uctuations in the confinement potential energy. It is proposed that the carrier relaxation processes occur either at the local minima or at the absolute minimum of the confinement potential, depending on the ratio of the thermal energy and the magnitude of the potential fluctuations.

A photon Green's function theory is used to incorporate Bethe- Salpeter-like many body corrections in the the computations of nonlinear optical spectra of semiconductor quantum well laser materials. The numerical results presented reproduce several features found in the experimental characterization of the actual devices.

Strained and partially relaxed In1-xGa xAs yP1-y /InP single quantum wells (SQWs) with different cap layer thicknesses and biaxial strain values grown by low-pressure metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (LP-MOVPE) were investigated by double crystal X-ray diffraction, photoluminescence microscopy (PLM) imaging and photoluminescence spectroscopy techniques. Our results indicate a significant improvement of the optical quality of the quaternary wells with increasing values of the cap layer thickness. Tensile and compressive strained In1-xGa xAs yP1-y /InP SQWs grown with the same structure exhibited different relaxation processes, even when the strain magnitude was the same. PLM images of highly compressive quantum wells exhibited a large number of dark lines corresponding to misfit dislocations as a result of the partial relaxation process in the well material. PLM images of similar tensile strained samples revealed only the presence of dark spots with no evidence of misfit dislocations.

We present measurements of the differential gain of multiquantum well (MQW) broad area lasers emitting at 1.55<FONT FACE="Symbol">m</font>m wavelength, taking into account the nonuniform stimulated emission caused by filamentation within the optical cavity. The differential gain was determined from measurements of the threshold current density, considering the losses due to the inhomogenous carrier density distribution, as an apparent leakage current effect in the output power-current characteristics. The lasers were grown by low pressure MOCVD and incorporate an InGaAs/InGaAsP/InP separate confinement MQW active region. The results are compared with previous data reported on similar MQW heterostructures.