Capture and Relaxation in Self-assembled Semiconductor Quantum Dots: The Dot and Its Environment

This is an overview of different models and mechanisms developed to describe the capture and relaxation of carriers in quantum-dot systems. Despite their undisputed importance, the mechanisms leading to population and energy exchanges between a quantum dot and its environment are not yet fully understood. The authors develop a first-order approach to such effects, using elementary quantum mechanics and an introduction to the physics of semiconductors. The book results from a series of lectures given by the authors at the Master’s level.

Robson Ferreira received a PhD from the Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) University in 1992. He is presently Directeur de Recherche at the French Council for Research (CNRS), working on the electronic states and optical properties of low dimensional materials and heterostructures. He has additionally been involved with teaching, lecturing for many years on semiconductor materials and their nanostructures (Master programs at Paris 6 University and Ecole Normale Supérieure -Paris).

Gerald Bastard received a PhD thesis from Paris 7 University on Magneto-optical investigations of Hg1-xMnxTe alloys in 1979. He was post-doctoral fellow at IBM between 1981and 1982 in Leo Esaki's group and regularly visits the Technical University Vienna, Institute of Industrial Science Tokyo, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Lund University. Dr. Bastard is currently Directeur de Recherche CNRS (emeritus). He has written a textbook on Wave mechanics applied to semiconductor heterostructures. Gerald Bastard is a fellow of the American Physical Society (1993) and was awarded several prizes such as the Fujitsu Quantum Device Award (2000) and the Heinrich Welker prize for compound semiconductors (2014).