Dephasing of coherent one-dimensional transport in a disordered wire

A phenomenological model is proposed to study the effect of phase-breaking collisions on coherent electron transport in a disordered one-dimensional single-channel GaAs wire. The mean resistance, typical resistance, and resistance distribution as functions of the wire length L, coherence length L-phi, and localization length xi are traced from the coherent regime at L < L-phi up to the incoherent one at L-phi much less than L. We demonstrate how the phase-breaking collisions modify the coherent transport results, in particular the universally scaled distribution of resistances and the mean and typical resistance related to this distribution. Disorder in the GaAs wire, if any, is often strong. We examine the effect of strong disorder on coherent transport and find peculiar deviations from universal scaling. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.