  Structural and static properties of a classical two-dimensional (2D) system
consisting of a finite number of charged particles which are laterally confined
by a parabolic potential are investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations and
the Newton optimization technique. This system is the classical analog of the
well-known quantum dot problem. The energies and configurations of the ground
and all metastable states are obtained. In order to investigate the barriers
and the transitions between the ground and all metastable states we first
locate the saddle points between them, then by walking downhill from the saddle
point to the different minima, we find the path in configurational space from
the ground state to the metastable states, from which the geometric properties
of the energy landscape are obtained. The sensitivity of the ground-state
configuration on the functional form of the inter-particle interaction and on
the confinement potential is also investigated.
