Intersecting non-SUSY branes and closed string tachyon condensation

Abstract

Following [H. Bai, J.X. Lu, S. Roy, Intersecting non-SUSY p-brane with chargeless 0-brane as black p-brane, JHEP 0701 (2007) 094, hep-th/0610264] we here consider the supergravity solutions representing the charged non-supersymmetric p-brane (for 1 ⩽ p ⩽ 6 ) intersecting with chargeless non-supersymmetric 1-brane and 0-brane of type II string theories. We show how these solutions nicely interpolate between black p-branes and the Kaluza–Klein “bubble of nothing” (BON) by continuously varying some parameters characterizing the solutions from one set of values to another. By performing a time symmetric general bubble initial data analysis, we show that the interpolation implies a possible transition from black p-branes to KK BON only for p ⩽ 4 , as in these cases there exist locally stable static bubbles under certain conditions. However, for p > 4 , black branes always decay into dynamical bubbles. Contrary to what is known in the literature, we argue that under certain conditions, the mechanism causing this transition to stable static bubbles can be the closed string tachyon condensation for all p ⩽ 4 . We also show that the configurations indeed contain (chargeless) F-strings required for the closed string tachyons to appear causing the transitions to occur.