Quantum-Dot Ground-State Energies and Spin Polarizations: Soft versus Hard Chaos

We consider how the nature of the dynamics affects ground state properties of ballistic quantum dots. We find that "mesoscopic Stoner fluctuations" that arise from the residual screened Coulomb interaction are very sensitive to the degree of chaos. It leads to ground state energies and spin polarizations whose fluctuations strongly increase as a system becomes less chaotic. The crucial features are illustrated with a model that depends on a parameter that tunes the dynamics from nearly integrable to mostly chaotic.