Optics of Excitons in Confined Systems provides an overview of research in semiconductors that exhibit resonance enhanced optical nonlinearities in the frequency range close to the valence-conduction band gap. The book is divided into the following sections: quantum wells, wires, and dots; superlattices; nonlinear optical properties of confined systems; and effects of external fields on confined systems. Topics range from fundamental theory to more applied aspects of excitons in confined sytems.

This book contains the proceedings of the International Meeting on Confined Excitons held in Rome in April 1987. The aim of the meeting was to discuss excitons confined in a variety of systems from semi-infinite solids to quantum wells. In the part on excitons in semi-infinite solids, the long-running discussion on exciton reflectance, involving the concepts of additional boundary conditions and the dead layer, is summarized and extended. The papers on excitons in thin films and in "thick" quantum wells bridge the gap between semi-infinite semiconductors and the usual quantum wells, presenting interesting results on exciton quantization. The third part reports many new results in the recently developed area of excitons in quantum wells and on the very new topic of excitons in quantum wires. Knowledge of the quantum well properties is an important aspect in the determination of exciton states, so tutorial articles on the growth and band structure of quantum wells are also included.

The optical properties of semiconductors have played an important role since the identification of semiconductors as "small" bandgap materials in the thinies, due both to their fundamental interest as a class of solids baving specific optical propenies and to their many important applications. On the former aspect we can cite the fundamental edge absorption and its assignment to direct or indirect transitions, many-body effects as revealed by exciton formation and photoconductivity. On the latter aspect, large-scale applications sucb as LEDs and lasers, photovoltaic converters, photodetectors, electro-optics and non-linear optic devices, come to mind. The eighties saw a revitalization of the whole field due to the advent of heterostructures of lower-dimensionality, mainly two-dimensional quantum wells, which through their enhanced photon-matter interaction yielded new devices with unsurpassed performance. Although many of the basic phenomena were evidenced through the seventies, it was this impact on applications which in turn led to such a massive investment in fabrication tools, thanks to which many new structures and materials were studied, yielding funher advances in fundamental physics.

These proceedings review the progress in most aspects of semiconductor physics, including those related to materials, processing and devices. The conference continues the tradition of the ICPS series and these volumes include state-of-the-art lectures. The plenary and invited papers address areas of major interest.These volumes will serve as excellent material for researchers in semiconductor physics and related fields.

X-Ray Lasers 1992 contains a total of 92 papers from many of the world's leading researchers in the rapidly developing field of x-ray lasers. The book accurately reflects trends in x-ray laser research, particularly in pump mechanisms other than collisional pumping. It also focuses on the realization of new ideas for generating inversions at x-ray transitions.