  We study the effects of electron-electron correlations and confinement
potential on the far-infrared spectrum of a lateral two-electron quantum dot
molecule by exact diagonalization. The calculated spectra directly reflect the
lowered symmetry of the external confinement potential. Surprisingly, we find
interactions to drive the spectrum towards that of a high-symmetry parabolic
quantum dot. We conclude that far-infrared spectroscopy is suitable for probing
effective confinement of the electrons in a quantum dot system, even if
interaction effects cannot be resolved in a direct fashion.
