Abstract
The temperature dependence of the electronic states and energy gaps of semiconductors is an old but still important experimental and theoretical topic. Remarkably, extant results do not clarify the asymptotic behavior. Recent breakthroughs in the spectroscopy of enriched allow us to measure changes in the band gap over the liquid temperature range with an astounding precision of one part in , revealing a decrease with increasing . This is in excellent agreement with a theoretical argument predicting an exponent of 4. This power law should apply, in the low temperature limit, to the temperature dependence of the energies of all electronic states in semiconductors and insulators.
- Received 8 December 2003
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.196403
©2004 American Physical Society