  This Chapter contains a review of the recent results, both experimental and
theoretical, related to optical control of carriers confined in semiconductor
quantum dots. The physics of Rabi oscillations of exciton and biexciton
occupations, as well as time-domain interference experiments are discussed.
Next, the impact of carrier--phonon interaction in a semiconductor structure is
described and modern methods of theoretical description of the carrier--phonon
kinetics and of the resulting dephasing are presented.
