The absorption spectrum of a heteropolar crystal : the rôle of many-particle effects

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Abstract
We present (a) a local-orbital formulation of the electron-hole interaction in a heteropolar semiconductor which takes into account both the screened electron-hole attraction and its exchange counterpart, giving rise to the excitonic and local-field effects, respectively, and (b) a calculation of the absorption spectrum in GaP, which demonstrates the dominant rôle played by the continuum-exciton effect on the main optical absorption of a compound semiconductor. Our findings on the importance of many-particle effects closely parallel those of previous work on the covalent semiconductor Si