The Advanced Study Institute (AS!) considered a number offacets of the very rapidly advancing field of theoretical and experimental aspects of ultrashort processes in condensed matter. Common threads exist between a series of example cases. One major subgroup of topics involves the ultrashort dynamics of excitations of various "particles" produced through the interactions of condensed matter with ultrashort duration laser light. Examples ofthe excitations include electronic and hole carriers, electron-hole plasma, phonons, vibrons and rotons, two phonon states, and excitons. Experimentation on the dynamics of such excitations, are carried out in the bulk, at surfaces, in thin films, and in quantum wells. The dynamical steps which the excitations usually undergo include photo-excitation, local thermalization, particle-particle interaction, particle phonon interactions and eventual return to true thermal equilibrium. This ASI was organized to benefit particularly advanced graduate students, specifically, those near the end of their Ph.D. thesis projects, and also for postdoctoral scholars already active in the field. The overall organizational goal was centered around a set oftutorially based lectures intermingled with full scale discussion periods of equal time and importance as the lectures. The general discussion periods were designed to offer to the participants ample time to ask detailed questions and to make comments and contributions of their own. In order to complete the involvement of the participants a full length poster session was also held. A representative set of abstracts of these posters appear as an Appendix to the lectures.

Ultrafast spectroscopy of semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures is currently one of the most exciting areas of research in condensed-matter physics. Remarkable recent progress in the generation of tunable femtosecond pulses has allowed direct investigation of the most fundamental dynamical processes in semiconductors. This second edition presents the most striking recent advances in the techniques of ultrashort pulse generation and ultrafast spectroscopy; it discusses the physics of relaxation, tunneling and transport dynamics in semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures following excitation by femtosecond laser pulses.

Semiconductor Optics provides an introduction to and an overview of semiconductor optics from the IR through the visible to the UV, including linear and nonlinear optical properties, dynamics, magneto- and electrooptics, high-excitation effects, some applications, experimental techniques and group theory. Mathematics is kept as elementary as possible, enough for an intuitive understanding of the experimental results and techniques treated. The subjects covered extend from physics to materials science and optoelectronics.

This book documents the recent vivid developments in the research field of ultrashort intense light pulses for probing and controlling ultrafast dynamics. The recent fascinating results in studying and controlling ultrafast dynamics in ever more complicated systems such as (bio-)molecules and structures of meso- to macroscopic sizes on ever shorter time-scales are presented. The book is written by some of the most eminent experimental and theoretical experts in the field. It covers the new groundbreaking research directions that were opened by the availability of new light sources such as fully controlled intense laser fields with durations down to a single oscillation cycle, short-wavelength laser-driven attosecond pulses and intense X-ray pulses from the upcoming free electron lasers. These light sources allowed the investigation of dynamics in atoms, molecules, clusters, on surfaces and very recently also in nanostructures and solids in new regimes of parameters which, in turn, led to the identification of completely new dynamics and methods for controlling it. Example topics covered by this book include the study of ultrafast processes in large molecules using attosecond pulses, control of ultrafast electron dynamics in solids with shaped femtosecond laser pulses, light-driven ultrafast plasmonic processes on surfaces and in nanostructures as well as research on atomic and molecular systems under intense X-ray radiation. This book is equally helpful for people who would like to step into this field (e.g. young researchers), for whom it provides a broad introduction, as well as for already experienced researchers who may enjoy the exhaustive discussion that covers the research on essentially all currently studied objects and with all available ultrafast pulse sources.

Metamaterials represent a new emerging innovative field of research which has shown rapid acceleration over the last couple of years. In this handbook, we present the richness of the field of metamaterials in its widest sense, describing artificial media with sub-wavelength structure for control over wave propagation in four volumes.Volume 1 focuses on the fundamentals of electromagnetic metamaterials in all their richness, including metasurfaces and hyperbolic metamaterials. Volume 2 widens the picture to include elastic, acoustic, and seismic systems, whereas Volume 3 presents nonlinear and active photonic metamaterials. Finally, Volume 4 includes recent progress in the field of nanoplasmonics, used extensively for the tailoring of the unit cell response of photonic metamaterials.In its totality, we hope that this handbook will be useful for a wide spectrum of readers, from students to active researchers in industry, as well as teachers of advanced courses on wave propagation.

The rapid development of powerful pulsed lasers is at the origin of a conside rable interest in studying the response of an atom, a molecule (or a solid) to a strong electromagnetic field. It is now possible to produce at the laboratory scale, ultra-short 13 pulses with a duration of 100 femtoseconds (10- second) and a power of the order 12 of 1 terawatt (10 Watt). Under these conditions, very high peak intensities may be obtained and electric fields exceeding typical electron binding fields in atoms are generated. The interaction of an atom or a molecule with such electromagnetic fields has a highly non-linear character which leads to unexpected phenomena. Amongst them, - above-threshold ionization (ATI) i.e. the absorption of additional photons in excess of the minimal number necessary to overcome the ionization potential and its molecular counterpart, above-threshold dissociation (ATD); - generation of very high harmonics of the driving field; - stabilization of one-electron systems in strong fields. These processes were the main topics of two international meetings which were held in 1989 and 1991 in the United States under the common name SILAP (Super-Intense Laser-Atom Physics).

This book presents research on quasi-random and random photonic systems for graduate students and researchers in optics, photonics and optical engineering.