Excitons in Confined Systems

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.