Selection rules for spectroscopy of quantum dots

Coulomb interaction between electrons substantially influences the properties of quantum dots. Its effect on the ground state energy becomes most obvious in the Coulomb blockade of transport and single electron tunneling. More subtly, the Coulomb interaction affects the few-particle wave functions by introducing strong correlations between the electrons. These correlations in turn give rise to selection rules for transport spectroscopy in quantum dots. These rules favor collective modes for observation in non-linear conductance experiments, and therefore their excitations dominate tunneling spectra.