Light Scattering By Phonon Polaritons

The International Conference on Light Scattering Spectra of Solids was held at New York University on September 3, 4, 5, 6, 1968. The Conference received financial support from the U. S. Army Research Office (Durham), The New York State Science and Technology Foundation, the U. S. Office of Naval Research, and The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of New York University. Co-sponsoring the Conference was the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The initial conception for the Light Scattering Conference arose from informal discussions held by Professor Eli Burstein, Professor Marvin Silver (representing the U. S. Army Research Office) and Professor Joseph Birman, late in 1966. In early discussions a format was put forth for a meeting to be held the following year, re viewing the state of the art, and emphasizing novel developments which had 9ccurred since the 1965 International Colloquium on Scattering Spectra of Crystals held in Paris (proceedings published in Le Journal de Physique, Volume 26, November 1965).

It is widely recognized that an understanding of the optical pro perties of matter will give a great deal of important information re levant to the fundamental physical properties. This is especially true in semiconductor physics for which, due to the intrinsic low screening of these materials, the optical response is quite rich. Their spectra reflect indeed as well electronic as spin or phonon transitions. This is also in the semiconductor field that artificial structures have been recently developed, showing for the first time specific physical properties related to the low dimentionality of the electronic and vi bronic properties : with this respect the quantum and fractional quan tum Hall effects are among the most well known aspects. The associated reduced screening is also a clear manifestation of these aspects and as such favors new optical properties or at least significantly enhan ces some of them. For all these reasons, it appeared necessary to try to review in a global way what the optical investigation has brought today about the understanding of the physics of semiconductors. This volume collects the papers presented at the NATO Advanced study Inst i tut e on "Optical Properties of Semiconductors" held at the Ettore Majorana Centre, Erice, Sicily on March 9th to 20th, 1992. This school brought together 70 scientists active in research related to optical properties of semiconductors. There were 12 lecturers who pro vided the main contributions .

Inelastic Light Scattering documents the proceedings of the 1979 US-Japan Seminar held at Santa Monica, California, USA, 22-25 January 1979. The seminar is one of a continuing series of seminars on ""Current Developments in Science,"" which are jointly sponsored by the United States National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science as part of the United States-Japan Cooperative Science Program. These joint seminars provide a medium for personal interactions between theorists and experimentalists from the two countries. The aim of the joint seminar on inelastic light scattering was to organize a program which would focus on important theoretical and experimental developments that reflect the complementarity of Japanese and US efforts in this important field. The topics covered by the papers presented at the seminar include resonant Raman scattering and luminescence; light scattering under intense illumination; resonant Brillouin scattering and non-local optics; enhanced Raman scattering by molecules adsorbed in metals; inelastic light scattering in superionic conductors and in glasses; Raman scattering by soft modes in IV-VI compound semiconductor and ferroelectrics; and central peaks in inelastic light scattering at structural phase transitions.

The first part of this three-volume treatment, Phonons: Theory and Exper iments I, has been devoted to the basic concepts of the physics of phonons and to a study of models of interatomic forces. The present second volume, Phonons: Theory and Experiments II, contains a thorough study of experi mental techniques and the interpretation of experimental results. In a third volume we shall treat a number of phenomena which are directly related to lattice dynamics. The aim of this treatment is to bridge the gap between theory and ex periment. Both experimental aspects and theoretical concepts necessary for an interpretation of experimental data are discussed. An attempt has been made to present the descriptive as well as the analytical aspects of the top ics. Although emphasis is placed on the experimental and theoretical study of the dynamics of atoms in solids, most chapters also contain a general in troduction to the specific subject. The text is addressed to experimentalists and theoreticians working in the vast field of dynamical properties of solids. It will also prove useful to graduate students starting research in this or related fields. The choice of the topics treated was partly determined by the author's own activity in these areas. This is particularly the case for the chapters dealing with infrared, Raman and inelastic neutron spectroscopy, as well as for some newer developments such as the optical spectroscopy of thin films and adsorbates.