[1] He is known for his pioneering fundamental research in the optical physics of solids; for writing and editing hundreds of articles and other publications; for bringing together scientists from around the world in international meetings, conferences, and symposia; and for training and mentoring dozens of younger physicists.

[3] The 1954 paper that has become his most-cited publication[11] explained an "anomalous shift" of the interband optical absorption edge of InSb to higher energies that had been reported by researchers at Bell Labs.

In later work at NRL, Burstein and his collaborators used low temperature absorption spectra to study the excited states of shallow impurities in silicon and detected deviations from the existing theoretical models.

They also reported the first observation of cyclotron resonance of electrons in InSb at room temperature at frequencies in the infrared,[17] and explained this quantum mechanically as corresponding to intraband optical transitions between discrete Landau levels within the valence or conduction bands.

Burstein was one of the first to use lasers to do fundamental research on semiconductors and insulators, and he played an integral role in determining the mechanisms underlying inelastic light (Raman) scattering phenomena and the conditions for their observation.

He and his students observed that an applied electric field induced normally forbidden infrared absorption by long wavelength optical lattice vibrations in diamond structure crystals.

Further work lead to the investigation of the role of surface space charge electric fields and associated band-bending in inducing an otherwise forbidden Raman scattering by longitudinal optical vibration modes in InSb.

[29][30] The inelastic light scattering by single particle excitations at a GaAs surface was successfully observed using laser frequencies near the E0 + Δ0 energy gap of n-GaAs.

[31] Burstein and co-workers pointed out that the cross-section for light scattering by single particle excitations in inversion layers and quantum wells (i.e., two dimensional electron systems) of polar semiconductors is strongly enhanced for incident laser frequencies at energy gaps where the direct optical interband transitions involve carrier-occupied states in either the conduction or valence band.

[32][33][34] This insight and further work led to their formulation of the mechanisms underlying the inelastic light scattering by charge carriers in 2-dimensional plasmas, as well as the specific nature of the coupled LO phonon-intersubband excitation modes of polar semiconductors.