Exchange and the Coulomb blockade: Peak height statistics in quantum dots

We study the effect of the exchange interaction on the Coulomb blockade peak height statistics in chaotic quantum dots. Since exchange reduces the level repulsion in the many-body spectrum, it strongly affects the fluctuations of the peak conductance at finite temperature. We find that including exchange substantially improves the description of the experimental data. Moreover, it provides further evidence of the presence of high-spin states $(S>~1)$ in such systems.