Interaction of scarred wavefunctions and spontaneous spin polarization in quantum dots

We discuss results of spin density functional calculations for lateral GaAs - AlGaAs quantum dots in the regime of electron number N similar to 100. We present typical results showing the evolution of the total dot polarization as a gate voltage V-g is swept and the electron number increases, We show that occasional collapse of the spin polarization occurs and we note that these values of N are characterized by the presence of strongly "scarred" eigenstates at the Fermi surface.