Some current topics in condensed matter physics 2014

In this volume, different works related with problems of the current condensed matter research are put together. They are mostly related with the electronic and optical properties of semiconductor or dielectric layered heterostructures. Within this context the reader may find reports on the use of the transfer matrix formalism to solve effective-mass like equations, the features of anisotropic radiative emission and photon recycling in strain-balanced quantum well solar cells as well as the heavy hole Rashba coupling in semiconductor heterosystems. The transfer matrix scheme also appears in three chapters devoted to discuss photonic and phononic properties of one-dimensional dielectric heterolayers, whereas another two of them deal with the transport of Dirac electrons in quasi-regular graphene layered structures. As well, there is a contribution concerning to the linear and nonlinear optical properties associated to intersubband electron transitions in delta-doped quantum wells.