Spin and Conductance-Peak-Spacing Distributions in Large Quantum Dots: A Density-Functional Theory Study

We use spin-density-functional theory to study the spacing between conductance peaks and the ground-state spin of 2D model quantum dots with up to 200 electrons. Distributions for different ranges of electron number are obtained in both symmetric and asymmetric potentials. The even/odd effect is pronounced for small symmetric dots but vanishes for large asymmetric ones, suggesting substantially stronger interaction effects than expected. The fraction of high-spin ground states is remarkably large.