Optical studies of charged excitons in II-VI semiconductor quantum wells

A brief review is given of optical studies of doped II-VI quantum wells. The properties of exciton states, neutral as well as positively and negatively charged, are discussed. A wide range of optical measurements is presented: CW as well as picosecond and femtosecond time-resolved absorption, photoluminescence (PL) and PL excitation. The experiments were performed at various carrier concentrations (>10(11) cm(-2)) and temperatures (up to a few tens of kelvins). This review is limited to zero or low magnetic fields, used only to polarize spins of carriers. We discuss the obtained values of various fundamental parameters of the excitonic states: energies, optical transition probabilities and characteristic times of their formation, thermalization and decay.