  We explore correlated electron states in harmonically confined few-electron
quantum dots in an external magnetic field by the path-integral Monte Carlo
method for a wide range of the field and the Coulomb interaction strength.
Using the phase structure of a preceding unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculation
for phase fixing, we find a rich variety of correlated states, often completely
different from the prediction of mean-field theory. These are finite
temperature results, but sometimes the correlations saturate with decreasing
temperature, providing insight into the ground-state properties.
