There a r e many Considerable discrepancies in the literature data concerning the optical properties of gallium antimonide crystals /1 to 3 / . The complexity of studying the gallium antimonide crystals i s increased by the presence of a very low second minimum of the conduction band lying only by 0.08 eV higher than the bottom of the main minimum. Below this minimum doping with various admixtures involves the formation of levels whose energetic positions substantially depend on the kind of admixture / 4 , 5/.In the present paper the dependence of the forbidden optical band gap in tellurium and selenium doped gallium antimonide crystals is studied. The investigations were carried out at 77 and 300 K.The experimental values of the forbidden optical band gap were determined from the spectral dependence of the absorption coefficient in the region of the fundamental band edge. The theoretical calculations were carried out with strict account of the influence of doping on the width of the forbidden band and the Fermi level position / 6 , 7 / .The results of comparing the experimental and the theoretically calculated valhes a r e given in Fig. 1, 2. These figures show that agreement between experiment and theory exists only at concentrations not greater than x. 5x10 17 -3 cm at 300 K and -3 7 x 1 0~~ c m at 77K. At higher concentrations the experimental dependences nium doped crystals differs quite distinctly. 25 A 1 085 -,F ' x E = f(n) greatly differ from the theoretically calculated ones. The behaviour of E O P = f(n) for tellurium and sele-O P $4 , x us 080 k Fig. 1. Dependence of Ecally calculated dependence is shown by a continuous line = f(n) for crystals doped with 0 75 tellurium (-+) and selen@m (-X-) at 77 K. The theoreti-7o17 loB 1oJ9 n (~17131-