Two-photon coherent polarization flipping of confined excitons

A two-photon process leading to coherent transitions between the two circularly polarized exciton states in a quantum dot is studied. It is shown that optical flipping of the exciton polarization is possible with picosecond laser pulses. The process is closely related to two-photon Rabi oscillations of a biexciton but it is much more stable against shifts of the laser frequency.