Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons is a unique effect in which the electronic states of a solid can self-organize to acquire quantum phase coherence. The phenomenon is closely linked to Bose-Einstein condensation in other systems such as liquid helium and laser-cooled atomic gases. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive survey of this field, covering theoretical aspects as well as recent experimental work. After setting out the relevant basic physics of excitons, the authors discuss exciton-phonon interactions as well as the behaviour of biexcitons. They cover exciton phase transitions and give particular attention to nonlinear optical effects including the optical Stark effect and chaos in excitonic systems. The thermodynamics of equilibrium, quasi-equilibrium, and nonequilibrium systems are examined in detail. The authors interweave theoretical and experimental results throughout the book, and it will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in semiconductor and superconductor physics, quantum optics, and atomic physics.

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The influence of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) on the two-dimensional (2D) electrons and holes in a strong perpendicular magnetic field leads to different results for the Landau quantization in different spin projections. In the Landau gauge the unidimensional wave vector describing the free motion in one in-plane direction is the same for both spin projections, whereas the numbers of Landau quantization levels are different. For an electron in an s-type conduction band they differ by one, as was established earlier by Rashba (1960 Fiz. Tverd. Tela 2 1224), whereas for heavy holes in a p-type valence band influenced by the 2D symmetry of the layer they differ by three. The shifts and the rearrangements of the 2D hole Landau quantization levels on the energy scale are much larger in comparison with the case of conduction electron Landau levels. This is due to the strong influence of the magnetic field on the RSOC parameter. At sufficiently large values of this parameter the shifts and rearrangements are comparable with the hole cyclotron energy. There are two lowest spin-split Landau levels for electrons as well as four lowest ones for holes in the case of small RSOC parameters. They give rise to eight lowest energy bands of the 2D magnetoexcitons, as well as of the band-to-band quantum transitions. It is shown that three of them are dipole-active, three are quadrupole-active and two are forbidden. The optical orientation under the influence of circularly polarized light leads to optical alignment of the magnetoexcitons with different orbital momentum projections in the direction of the external magnetic field.

The Landau quantization of the two-dimensional (2D) heavy holes, its influence on the energy spectrum of 2D magnetoexcitons, as well as their optical orientation are studied. The Hamiltonian of the heavy holes is written in two-band model taking into account the Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) with two spin projections, but with nonparabolic dispersion law and third-order chirality terms. The most Landau levels, except three with m=0,1,2, are characterized by two quantum numbers m-3 and m for m≥3 for two spin projections correspondingly. The difference between them is determined by the third-order chirality. Four lowest Landau levels (LLLs) for heavy holes were combined with two LLLs for conduction electron, which were taken the same as they were deduced by Rashba in his theory of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) based on the initial parabolic dispersion law and first-order chirality terms. As a result of these combinations eight 2D magnetoexciton states were formed. Their energy spectrum and the selection rules for the quantum transitions from the ground state of the crystal to exciton states were determined. On this base such optical orientation effects as spin polarization and magnetoexciton alignment are discussed. The continuous transformation of the shake-up (SU) into the shake-down (SD) recombination lines is explained on the base of nonmonotonous dependence of the heavy hole Landau quantization levels as a function of applied magnetic field. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved