Determination of the tunnel rates through a few-electron quantum dot

We demonstrate how rate equations can be employed to find analytical expressions for the sequential tunneling current through a quantum dot as a function of the tunnel rates, for an arbitrary number of states involved. We apply this method at the one-to-two electron transition where the electron states are known exactly. By comparing the obtained expressions to experimental data, the tunnel rates for six transitions are extracted. We find that these rates depend strongly on the spin and orbital states involved in the tunnel process.