Scaling in the correlation energies of two-dimensional artificial atoms

Prediction of quantum dot characteristics through universal scaling relations

We derive scaling relations for the electrochemical potential and addition energy of 2D quantum dots charged with N electrons. In the derivation we apply the Thomas-Fermi theory for the harmonic model of a quantum dot in the effective mass approximation. We demonstrate that the resulting scaling relations yield excellent agreement with measured chemical potentials and addition energies for both lateral and vertical quantum dots. Moreover, we show that the scaling relation has predictive power in estimating the confinement strength and the number of electrons trapped in the quantum dot.