A comparative study of two phenomenological models of dephasing in series and parallel resistors

Abstract

We compare two phenomenological models of dephasing that are in use recently. We show that the stochastic absorption model leads to reasonable dephasing in series (double barrier) and parallel (ring) quantum resistors in presence and absence of magnetic flux. For large enough dephasing it leads to Ohm's law. On the other hand a random phase based statistical model that uses averaging over Gaussian random-phases, picked up by the propagators, leads to several inconsistencies. This can be attributed to the failure of this model to dephase interference between complementary electron waves each following time-reversed path of the other.