Conductance fluctuations in the coulomb blockade regime

Recent experiments on the conductance through semiconducting quantum dots weakly coupled to external leads enable us to study the ground state properties of these dots. The spacings between the resonant peaks as well as their heights indicate that the electrons in the dot are in a correlated state due to their low density, in which both disorder and electron-electron interactions determine the properties of the electron system. Numerical treatments of model Hamiltonians were successful in reproducing many of the experimentally observed features of the conductance and reveal important clues on the relevant physics behind these features. These studies also indicate that the ground state is spin polarized, a prediction which could be experimentally verified.