Many-body origin of the "trion line"

We show that the so-called "trion line" in the absorption spectrum of doped quantum wells, comes from a singular many-body object, intrinsically wide in energy: the photocreated virtual exciton dressed by Coulomb and Pauli interactions with the well carriers. This understanding is supported by the spectra of circular dichroism obtained with a spin-polarized Fermi sea: the sharp edge on the low-energy side and the significant tail at high energies are well explained by these many-body effects, not by bound 3-body trions.