Voltage and dephasing probes: a full counting statistics discussion
  Voltage and dephasing probes introduce incoherent inelastic and incoherent quasi-elastic scattering into a coherent mesoscopic conductor. We discuss in detail the concepts of voltage and dephasing probes and develop a full counting statistics approach to investigate their effect on the transport statistics. The formalism is applied to several experimentally relevant examples. A comparison of different probe models and with procedures like phase averaging over an appropriate phase distribution shows that there is a perfect equivalence between the models for the case of one single-channel probe. Interestingly, the appropriate phase distribution function is found to be uniform. A uniform distribution is provided by a chaotic cavity with a long dwell time. The dwell time of a chaotic cavity plays a role similar to the charge response time of a voltage or dephasing probe. For multi-channel or multiple probes the transport statistics of voltage and dephasing probes differs and the equivalence with phase averaging is similarly lost. 
Heidi Forster, Peter Samuelsson, Sebastian Pilgram and Markus Buttiker