The electronic structure and optical properties of covalent amorphous semiconductors are theoretically studied with special attention to the s-p hybridization in electronic states and the spatial correlation in their mixing. One-dimensional tightbinding model is used in which the interatomic transfer energy of an electron between nearest neighbor atoms depends linearly on their interatomic distance. All the electronic states are numerically calculated for a 150-atom system and the ensembleaverage is taken over 10 samples. Following results have been obtained. As the degree of randomness increases, the degree of hybridization decreases and rearrangements in the covalent bonds take place. The width of the band gap decreases but the gapremains rather long compared to a case where the spatial correlation is neglected. There appears a characteristic peak in the optical absorption spectrum, which reflects central peaks in the partial (s- or p-) density of states in the valence andconduction bands and is related to an electron localization caused by the spatial correlation.
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