Abstract
A new approach is described for the prediction of the optical properties of amorphous tetrahedrally bonded materials over the entire experimental energy range, in which a model of the imaginary part of the dielectric constant is assigned and the real part is obtained by the Kramers–Kronig transform. Tight‐binding theory provides direct interpretation of the model parameters. The model provides good insight into the physics of the problem and a quantitative account of experimental data as well. Results are presented for Si, Ge, Si3N4, and GaAs.