As artificially structured materials shrink towards dimensions where quantum-mechanical effects become paramount, and the inter- connections between optical and electronic devices increase, the understanding of optical/transport interactions will be a fundamental tool with which to enter the next century in electronics. By combining optical and transport measurement techniques with the fabrication of novel structures, one will investigate phenomena such as electron-electron and electron-hole coupling, edge-state conduction and one-dimensional quantum transport, electron crysallization, electron-hole condensation and the thermodynamic properties of reduced-dimension systems.
