  We present an analysis of the effect of dephasing on the single channel
charge relaxation resistance of a mesoscopic capacitor in the linear low
frequency regime. The capacitor consists of a cavity which is via a quantum
point contact connected to an electron reservoir and Coulomb coupled to a gate.
The capacitor is in a perpendicular high magnetic field such that only one
(spin polarized) edge state is (partially) transmitted through the contact. In
the coherent limit the charge relaxation resistance for a single channel
contact is independent of the transmission probability of the contact and given
by half a resistance quantum. The loss of coherence in the conductor is modeled
by attaching to it a fictitious probe, which draws no net current. In the
incoherent limit one could expect a charge relaxation resistance that is
inversely proportional to the transmission probability of the quantum point
contact. However, such a two terminal result requires that scattering is
between two electron reservoirs which provide full inelastic relaxation. We
find that dephasing of a single edge state in the cavity is not sufficient to
generate an interface resistance. As a consequence the charge relaxation
resistance is given by the sum of one constant interface resistance and the
(original) Landauer resistance. The same result is obtained in the high
temperature regime due to energy averaging over many occupied states in the
cavity. Only for a large number of open dephasing channels, describing
spatially homogenous dephasing in the cavity, do we recover the two terminal
resistance, which is inversely proportional to the transmission probability of
the QPC. We compare different dephasing models and discuss the relation of our
results to a recent experiment.
