Abstract :
We solve the problem of a few electrons in a two-dimensional harmonic confinement using a quantum mechanical exact diagonalization technique, on the one hand, and classical mechanics, on the other. The quantitative agreement between the results of these two calculations suggests that, at low filling factors, all the low energy excitations of a quantum Hall liquid are classical vibrations of localized electrons. The Coriolis force plays a dominant role in determining the classical vibration frequencies.