Carrier dynamics in quantum dots and their application to lasers and microcavity light emitters

In this paper we discuss recent experiments performed to characterize the energy relaxation of charge carriers in self-organized QDs. We find several interesting phenomena in these QDs, including a QD size dependence in the relaxation time. While large InGaAs QDs with closely spaced energy levels show relaxation times from the QD wetting layer to the 0-dimensional ground state of /spl sim/1 ps, smaller InAs QDs with more widely spaced energy levels show relaxation times of /spl sim/7 ps. In addition, an interesting pump dependence exists for the relaxation time (as measured by the radiative emission) for the first excited radiative transition to the ground state transition.