Confinement-induced enhancement of electron-electron interactions in open quantum-dot arrays - art. no. 241302

We study the properties of the logarithmic variation observed in the temper ature-dependent conductance of open quantum-dot arrays. The magnitude of th is variation is found to exhibit a well-defined scaling with system size, a nd is also found to be unaffected by the application of magnetic fields suf ficient to break time-reversal symmetry. We suggest that these characterist ics are consistent with the logarithmic variation resulting from a confinem ent-induced enhancement of electron interactions in the arrays. In particul ar, we note that the size-dependent scaling of this term is similar to that which we would expect for a system whose boundary interactions act to ampl ify the mutual repulsion of electrons trapped within it.