Spectroscopy of intraband optical transitions in anisotropic semiconductor nanocrystals

We propose a new type of optical spectroscopy of anisotropic semiconductor nanocrystals, which is based on the well-developed stationary pump-probe technique, where the pump and probe fields are absorbed upon, respectively, interband and intraband transitions of the nanocrystals' electronic subsystem. We develop a general theory of intraband absorption based on the density matrix formalism. This theory can be applied to study degenerate eigenstates of electrons in semiconductor nanocrystals of different shapes and dimentions. We demonstrate that the angular dependence of intraband absorption by nonspherical nanocrystals enables investigating their shape and orientation, as well as the symmetry of quantum states excited by the probe field and selection rules of electronic transitions.