Excitons in semiconductors and insulators consist of fermionic subsystems, electrons and holes, whose attractive interaction facilitates bound quasiparticles with quasi-bosonic character due to even-numbered pair spins. In the presence of a degenerate electron gas, such excitons dissociate due to free carrier screening, leaving a spectrally broad and faint optical signature behind. Contrary to this expected behaviour, we have discovered pronounced emission traces in bulk, germanium-doped GaN up to 100 K, mimicking excitonic behaviour at high free electron concentrations from 3.4E19/cm3 to 8.9E19/cm3. Consequently, we show that a degenerate, three-dimensional electron gas stabilizes a novel class of quasiparticles, named collexons, by many-particle effects dominated by exchange of electrons with the Fermi gas. The observation of collexons and their stabilisation with rising doping concentration, is facilitated by a superior crystal quality due to perfect substitution of the host atom with the dopant.
@article{arxiv.1610.01673,
title = {Electronic excitations stabilised by a degenerate electron gas in semiconductors},
author = {C. Nenstiel and G. Callsen and F. Nippert and T. Kure and M. R. Wagner and S. Schlichting and N. Jankowski and M. P. Hoffmann and S. Fritze and A. Dadgar and A. Krost and A. Hoffmann and F. Bechstedt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.01673},
year = {2020}
}