A model for dephasing in quantum dots

This study proposes a quantitative method to relate the loss of phase coherence in the transmission of electrons through a chaotic quantum dot with the measured conductance. It is found that accounting for thermal smearing and dephasing processes via the Büttiker phenomenological model, an excellent description of experimentally measured conductance distributions is obtained. It is shown that whereas dephasing governs the weak localization peak, it has little influence on the conductance fluctuations at low T.