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The temperature dependences of the charge-carrier concentration and lifetime of minority carriers in undoped and arsenic-doped p-type Hg1 - xCdxTe epitaxial layers with x ≈ 0.4 grown by the MOCVD-IMP (metalorganic chemical vapor deposition-interdiffusion multilayer process) method are studied. It is shown that the temperature dependences of the charge-carrier concentration can be described by a model assuming the presence of one acceptor and one donor level. The ionization energies of acceptors in the undoped and arsenic-doped materials are 14 and 3.6 meV, respectively. It is established that the dominant recombination mechanism in the undoped layers is Shockley-Read-Hall recombination, and after low-temperature equilibrium annealing in mercury vapors (230°C, 24 h), the dominant mechanism is radiative recombination. The fundamental limitation of the lifetime in the arsenic-doped material is caused by the Auger-7 process. Activation annealing (360°C, 2 h) of the doped layers makes it possible to attain the 100% activation of arsenic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]