Semiconductor Optics 1

Introduction.- Maxwell's Equations, Photons and the Density of States.- Interaction of Light with Matter.- Ensemble of Uncoupled Oscillators.- The Concept of Polaritons.- Kramers-Kronig Relations.- Crystals, Lattices, Lattice Vibrations and Phonons.- Electrons in a Periodic Crystal.- Excitons, Biexcitons and Trions.- Plasmons, Magnons and Some Further Elementary Excitations.- Optical Properties of Phonons.- Optical Properties of Plasmons, Plasmon-Phonon Mixed States and of Magnons.- Optical Properties of Intrinsic Excitons in Bulk Semiconductors.- Optical Properties of Bound and Localized Excitons and of Defect States.- Optical Properties of Excitons in Structures of Reduced Dimensionality.- Excitons Under the Influence of External Fields.- From Cavity Polaritons to Photonic Crystals.-Review of the Linear Optical Properties.- Appendix.- Index.

Heinz Kalt studied Physics at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bonn. He earned his doctoral degree in Physics from J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main in 1985 for a Dissertation (supervised by C. Klingshirn) on laser-induced gratings in CdS. During a postdoc stay at Center for Applied Quantum Electronics of North Texas State University in Denton (USA) he studied high-excitation phenomena and carrier dynamics in III-V semiconductors in the group of A. Smirl. There he also gave his first lecture on semiconductor optics to graduate students. H. Kalt continued his research work at Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Research in the group of W. Rühle and H.J. Queisser and at University Kaiserslautern again with C. Klingshirn. His investigations on optical properties of III-V multi-valley semiconductors formed the basis of his Habilitation Thesis (1993) which was also published in Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences. A second research focus in this time was the understanding of fundamental exciton and pair recombination mechanisms in the search for laser materials for the blue and visible spectral range.

In 1994 Heinz Kalt was appointed Professor of Applied Physics at Universität Karlsruhe (TH) (now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT). Since then his research interest included temporally and spatially resolved optical spectroscopy of semiconductor nano-structures, relaxation and transport dynamics of excitons, high-excitation effects, excitonic spin injection, storage and dynamics,  ZnO nano-rods, random lasing, semiconductor micro-cavities,  artificial organic light-harvesting complexes, optical whispering-gallery resonators, optical bio-sensing, polymer-based flexible photonics, modulation spectroscopy, and novel absorber materials for thin-film solar cells. H. Kalt has (co-)authored more than 350 publications mainly in the field of semiconductor optics.