Dephasing of interference in Landau-Zener transitions

We study the effect of dephasing on the Landau-Zener transition. Our approach is based on the interpretation of the transition as an interference process. We derive a phase-uncertainty factor for a general coupling to an environment, and demonstrate the enhancement of the asymptotic transition probability due to this phase uncertainty. We discuss the dependence of this enhancement on the properties of a specific environment at hand, the form of the coupling term, and the coupling strength. Given a certain type of coupling to the environment, we find the characteristic dephasing time () corresponding to the crossover from weak to strong dephasing. We argue that this crossover can be regarded as a probe of the relevant time scale of phase oscillations, which are suppressed by the specific dephasing mechanism.