An international team of experts describes the optical and electronic properties of semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures at picosecond and femtosecond time scales. The contributions cover the latest research on a wide range of topics. In particular they include novel experimental techniques for studying and characterizing nanostructure materials. The contributions are written in a tutorial way so that not only researchers in the field but also researchers and graduate students outside the field can benefit.

Since its inception in 1966, the series of numbered volumes known as Semiconductors and Semimetals has distinguished itself through the careful selection of well-known authors, editors, and contributors. The Willardson and Beer series, as it is widely known, has succeeded in producing numerous landmark volumes and chapters. Not only did many of these volumes make an impact at the time of their publication, but they continue to be well-cited years after their original release. Recently, Professor Eicke R. Weber of the University of California at Berkeley joined as a co-editor of the series. Professor Weber, a well-known expert in the field of semiconductor materials, will further contribute to continuing the series' tradition of publishing timely, highly relevant, and long-impacting volumes. Some of the recent volumes, such as Hydrogen in Semiconductors, Imperfections in III/V Materials, Epitaxial Microstructures, High-Speed Heterostructure Devices, Oxygen in Silicon, and others promise that this tradition will be maintained and even expanded.Reflecting the truly interdisciplinary nature of the field that the series covers, the volumes in Semiconductors and Semimetals have been and will continue to be of great interest to physicists, chemists, materials scientists, and device engineers in modern industry.

Recent advances in the fabrication of semiconductors have created almost un limited possibilities to design structures on a nanometre scale with extraordinary electronic and optoelectronic properties. The theoretical understanding of elec trical transport in such nanostructures is of utmost importance for future device applications. This represents a challenging issue of today's basic research since it requires advanced theoretical techniques to cope with the quantum limit of charge transport, ultrafast carrier dynamics and strongly nonlinear high-field ef fects. This book, which appears in the electronic materials series, presents an over view of the theoretical background and recent developments in the theory of electrical transport in semiconductor nanostructures. It contains 11 chapters which are written by experts in their fields. Starting with a tutorial introduction to the subject in Chapter 1, it proceeds to present different approaches to transport theory. The semiclassical Boltzmann transport equation is in the centre of the next three chapters. Hydrodynamic moment equations (Chapter 2), Monte Carlo techniques (Chapter 3) and the cellular au tomaton approach (Chapter 4) are introduced and illustrated with applications to nanometre structures and device simulation. A full quantum-transport theory covering the Kubo formalism and nonequilibrium Green's functions (Chapter 5) as well as the density matrix theory (Chapter 6) is then presented.

This is the first book to specifically focus on semiconductor nanocrystals, and address their synthesis and assembly, optical properties and spectroscopy, and potential areas of nanocrystal-based devices. The enormous potential of nanoscience to impact on industrial output is now clear. Over the next two decades, much of the science will transfer into new products and processes. One emerging area where this challenge will be very successfully met is the field of semiconductor nanocrystals. Also known as colloidal quantum dots, their unique properties have attracted much attention in the last twenty years.

This book reviews selected topics charterized by great progress and covers the field from theoretical areas to experimental ones. It contains fundamental areas, quantum query complexity, quantum statistical inference, quantum cloning, quantum entanglement, additivity. It treats three types of quantum security system, quantum public key cryptography, quantum key distribution, and quantum steganography. A photonic system is highlighted for the realization of quantum information processing.

Almost 30 years after the first reports on surface-enhanced Raman signals, the phenomenon of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is now well established. SERS gained particular interest after single-molecule Raman spectroscopy had been demonstrated. This book summarizes and discusses present theoretical approaches that explain the phenomenon of SERS and reports on new and exciting experiments and applications of the fascinating spectroscopic effect.

The primary goal of this text book is to ensure that any physical science student, even one who has never heard of the subject, should be able to learn what ultrafast spectroscopy is, why optics related to the subject requires special attention, how to use the basic ideas of the subject in laboratory-based ultrafast spectroscopy experiments, how to interpret the experimental observations and so on. This book gives a more than adequate introduction to mathematical representation of an ultrafast pulse, chirp, time-band width product, nonlinear optical effects, dispersion effects, construction of ultrafast laser, ultrafast measurement techniques and different ultrafast processes of chemical interest.

This text book gives a comprehensive account of magnetism, one of the oldest yet most vibrant fields of physics. It spans the historical development, the physical foundations and the continuing research underlying the subject. The book covers both the classical and quantum mechanical aspects of magnetism and novel experimental techniques. Perhaps uniquely, it discusses spin transport and magnetization dynamics phenomena associated with atomically and spin engineered nano-structures against the backdrop of spintronics and magnetic storage and memory applications. The book is for students, and serves as a reference for scientists in academia and research laboratories.

The past two decades have witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the understanding of ferroelectric materials, both from the perspective of theory and experiment. This book addresses the paradigmatic shifts in understanding brought about by these breakthroughs, including the consideration of novel fabrication methods and nanoscale applications of these materials, and new theoretical methods such as the effective Hamiltonian approach and density functional theory.