The two-photon absorption process is a nonlinear phenomenon that shows very low optical efficiency in bulk semiconductors. For this reason the detection of these processes becomes very difficult from the experimental point of view. Nevertheless, when dealing with semiconductor QD's with few nanometer radii, these transitions are enhanced and the detection is possible. In this contribution we present analytical calculations for the absorption coefficient in CdSe spherical QD's subjected to these second order processes, as a function of the characteristic dot parameters. The intensities of the absorption peaks, as well as the statistical treatment involving QD's ensembles, are also reported.

We calculate the spin relaxation rates in parabolic quantum dots due to the phonon modulation of the spin-orbit interaction in presence of an external magnetic field. Both, deformation potential (DP) and piezoelectric (PE) electron-phonon couplings are included in the Pavlov-Firsov spin-phonon Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that the spin relaxation rates are particularly sensitive with the Landé g-factor, and that for InAs dots the DP can be necessarily considered in the spin relaxation analysis. Low-temperature (T ~ 0) relaxation rates are found to be small and to depend strongly on size, g-factor, and on magnetic field.

The electron{acoustic-phonon scattering process in spherical II-VI quantum dots is discussed. The quantized acoustic modes are described in terms of the Lamb's classical theory. We considered two mechanism for the interaction between electrons and acoustic modes: microscopic deformation potential, and macroscopic acoustic deformation, also called the ripple mechanism. We also discuss the in uence of the glass matrix on the electron-phonon coupling. Our calculations show that the ripple mechanism scattering rates become dominant by more than an order of magnitude, for small dot radius. In general, the total scattering rate depends on the acoustical properties of the glass matrix.

GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well structures containing an nipi delta-doping superlattice, where the n-type doping is inserted in the quantum wells and the p-type in the barriers, have been studied in detail to evaluate their potential for use in the fabrication of amplitude modulators. It is shown that C is an adequate p-type dopant for such structures, however, little exibility is found in the growth conditions, in particular for the V to III uxes ratio, for obtaining such layers. It is also observed that the required balance between n and p type doping levels is not trivial to be achieved due to the presence of interface hole traps whose population depends on the quantum well doping concentration. In addition, the observed photoluminescence near-edge emission at room temperature occurs at essentially the same energy as that of an equivalent undoped structure. Finally, no deep level emissions are observed which could deteriorate the device performance.

In this work we calculated the electronic structure of spherical quantum dots based on zincblend semiconductor compounds. The strong conduction-valence band coupling in this class of semi-conductors induces a strong mixing of the electronic states which requires a theoretical model to properly take into acount these effects. We have used a full 8 x 8 Kane Hamiltonian in order to include the strong admixture and study the set of symetries associated with these electronic states and their angular momentum in this central force problem. As an application, we have calculated the electronic structure in narrow-gap HgCdTe, InSb and CdTe quantum dots.

A theoretical study of optical properties in narrow gap semiconductor quantum wells has been developed using an 8x8 Kane Hamiltonian. The interband transition selection rules have been obtained and a detailed description of the interband absorption using Voight and Faraday scattering configurations has been given. Interesting effects produced by the intraband admixture, such as spin-flip transitions, will be discussed. The complementation of measurements using different scattering configurations will be analyzed.