Role of Coulomb correlations in the optical spectra of semiconductor quantum dots

We present a consistent theoretical description of few-particle effects in the optical spectra of semiconductor quantum dots, based on a direct-diagon alization approach. We show that, because of the strong Coulomb interaction among electrons and holes, each configuration of the confined few-particle system leads to its characteristic signature in the optical spectra. We di scuss quantitative predictions and comparison with experiments for both abs orption and luminescence.