Deformation of Quantum Dots in the Coulomb Blockade Regime

We extend the theory of Coulomb blockade resonances to quantum dots which are deformed by the confining potential. We show that shape deformations can generate sequences of conductance resonances which carry the same internal wave function. This fact may cause strong correlations of neighboring conductance peaks. We demonstrate the relevance of our results for the interpretation of recent experiments on semiconductor quantum dots.