The role of spin in the conductance through interacting disordered dots

Recent experiments on the conductance through semiconducting quantum dots weakly coupled to external leads provide information about the role of the electrons spin in determining the ground-state properties of the dot. It turns out that contrary to naive expectations the electrons in the dot are in a correlated state due to their low density, in which both disorder and electron–electron interactions play an important role. The total spin of the electrons seems to be polarized which manifests itself in the properties of the conductance through the dot.