Valley-Orbit Interaction in Semiconductors

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Abstract
We consider the hypothesis that the valley-orbit interaction provides a sizable contribution to the observed splittings of the donor ground state in many-valley semiconductors. The effects of this interaction on the ground state of group-V donors in Si and Ge are estimated within the effective-mass theory and compared to central-cell corrections. It is shown that intervalley scattering effects are comparable in magnitude to central-cell corrections for donors in Si, whereas the latter are much more important for donors in Ge.