Carbon impurities implanted into single-crystalline germanium are stud
ied with infrared absorption spec troscopy and ion channeling. After i
mplantation of C-12(+) room temperature and subsequent annealing at 35
0 degrees C, a sharp infrared absorption line is observed at 531 cm(-1
). When C-12(+) is substituted by C-13(+), the Line shifts down in fre
quency to 512 cm(-1) and co-implantation of C-12(+) and C-13(+) does n
ot give rise to additional lines. Therefore, the 531-cm(-1) line repre
sents a local vibrational mode of a defect containing a single carbon
atom. Channeling measurements are carried out around the [100], [110],
and [111] axes in C-12(+)-implanted samples annealed at 450 degrees C
. The analysis of the data shows that 31+/-3% of the carbon atoms are
located at substitutional sites, while the remaining carbon atoms appe
ar to be located randomly. The population of the substitutional site a
nd the intensity of the 531-cm(-1) mode have identical temperature dep
endencies. It is concluded that the 531-cm(-1) mode is the three-dimen
sional T-2 stretch mode of substitutional carbon. The effective charge
of the mode is determined to be (3.4+/-0.5)e. Ab initio local density
functional cluster theory is applied to calculate the structure and t
he local vibrational modes of substitutional carbon in germanium. The
calculated frequencies and isotope shifts for the T-2 stretch mode are
in good agreement with the observations.