Plasma reflection and hole optical effective mass in p‐HgTe

The results of plasma reflection investigations in p‐HgTe are described. It is shown, that the plasma reflection spectrum shift towards small energies and the decrease of their depths with increasing temperature cannot be explained by the dielectric anomaly of the zero gap semiconductor due to the Γ8 → Γ8 transition only. The analysis of the experimental results shows that the optical effective mass value has both, a temperature and concentration dependence. Such a dependence may be explained in the frame of the Kane theory, if the renormalization of the energy spectrum of holes due to exchange electron—electron interaction is taken into account.