We investigate optical near‐field spectra of single and coupled semiconductor quantum dots. An enhanced role for the Coulomb correlations is predicted, and it is shown that the spectra depend crucially on the spatial resolution of the “local” probe. The intensity of certain optical peaks as a function of the resolution exhibits an unexpected non‐monotonic behavior, which is identified as a fingerprint of Coulomb interactions in zero‐dimensional nanostructures.

We study theoretically the local absorption spectra of single and double semiconductor quantum dots (QDs), in the linear regime. The three-dimensional confinement leads to an enhancement of the Coulomb correlations, while the spectra depend crucially on the size of the ‘local’ probe. We show that because of such Coulomb correlations the intensity of certain optical peaks as a function of the resolution can exhibit an unexpected non-monotonic behavior for spatial resolutions comparable with the excitonic Bohr radius. We finally discuss the optical near-field properties of coupled QDs for different coupling strengths.