Rotational and vibrational spectra of quantum rings

One can confine the two-dimensional electron gas in semiconductor heterostructures electrostatically or by etching techniques such that a small electron island is formed. These man-made ``artificial atoms'' provide the experimental realization of a text-book example of many-particle physics: a finite number of quantum particles in a trap. Much effort was spent on making such "quantum dots" smaller and going from the mesoscopic to the quantum regime. Far-reaching analogies to the physics of atoms, nuclei or metal clusters were obvious from the very beginning: The concepts of shell structure and Hund's rules were found to apply -- just as in real atoms! In this Letter, we report the discovery that electrons confined in ring-shaped quantum dots form rather rigid molecules with antiferromagnetic order in the ground state. This can be seen best from an analysis of the rotational and vibrational excitations