Suppression of Coulomb exchange energy in quasi-2D spin-3/2 hole systems

We have calculated the exchange-energy contribution to the total energy of quasi-2D spin-3/2 hole systems in typical semiconductors [1]. The magnitude of the exchange energy turns out to be suppressed from the value expected for analogous spin-1/2 conduction electron systems whenever the mixing between heavy-hole and light-hole components is strong. Our results are obtained using a general formalism for calculating the exchange energy of many-particle systems where single-particle states are multicomponent spinors. We have applied this approach to obtain analytical results for spin-3/2 hole systems in limiting cases.\\{} [1] Kernreiter et al., Phys.\ Rev.\ B \textbf{88}, 125309 (2013).