  We report inelastic light scattering measurements of spin and charge
excitations in nanofabricated AlGaAs/GaAs quantum dots with few electrons. A
narrow spin excitation peak is observed and assigned to the intershell
triplet-to-singlet monopole mode of dots with four electrons.
Configurationinteraction theory provides precise quantitative interpretations
that uncover large correlation effects that are comparable to exchange Coulomb
interactions.
