Tachyon Effective Action Research Articles

Probing tachyon kinks in Newton-Cartan background

In this paper, we perform a systematic analysis of tachyon condensation over string Newton-Cartan (NC) geometry by probing the background with non BPS Dp brane. We construct the finite tachyon effective action for NC geometry and explore the dynamics associated with the tachyon kink on the world-volume of the non BPS Dp brane. We show that under certain specific assumptions, the spatial dependent tachyon condensation leads to an emerging BPS D(p−1) brane dynamics over NC background. We further compute the stress energy tensor and show the equivalence between two different Dp brane configurations in the NC limit.

Universality in all-[formula omitted] order corrections to BPS/non-BPS brane world volume theories

Knowledge of all-α′ higher derivative corrections to leading order BPS and non-BPS brane actions would serve in future endeavor of determining the complete form of the non-abelian BPS and tachyonic effective actions. In this paper, we note that there is a universality in the all-α′ order corrections to BPS and non-BPS branes. We compute amplitudes between one Ramond–Ramond C-field vertex operator and several SYM gauge/scalar vertex operators. Specifically, we evaluate in closed form string correlators of two-point amplitudes ACϕ, ACA, a three-point amplitude ACϕϕ, and a four-point amplitude ACϕϕϕ. We carry out pole and contact term analysis. In particular we reproduce some of the contact terms and the infinite massless poles of ACϕϕϕ by SYM vertices obtained through the universality.

Kinks of open superstring field theory

We construct approximate kink solutions of supersymmetric open string field theory at lowest level when non-local operators in the tachyon effective action are fully taken into account. To this purpose we derive two duplication formulæ for products of incomplete gamma functions, which determine the level of approximation of the solutions. The time kink is an instanton of the Euclidean theory with a well-defined tunneling probability. The spatial kink solution represents an unstable D9-brane decaying into a stable D8-brane. We calculate the ratio of the brane tensions, which almost exactly reproduces the expected value.

Winding effects on brane/anti-brane pairs

We study a brane/anti-brane configuration which is separated along a compact direction by constructing a tachyon effective action which takes into account transverse scalars. Such an action is relevant in the study of HQCD model of Sakai and Sugimoto of chiral symmetry breaking, where the size of the compact circle sets the confinement scale. Our approach is motivated by string theory orbifold constructions and gives a route to model inhomogeneous tachyon decay. We illustrate the techniques involved with a relatively simple example of a harmonic oscillator on a circle. We will then repeat the analysis for the Sakai-Sugimoto model and show that by integrating out the winding modes will provide us with a renormalized action with a lower energy than that of truncating to zero winding sector.

Proper acceleration, the geometric tachyon and the dynamics of a fundamental string near Dp branes

We present a detailed analysis of our recent observation that the origin of the geometric tachyon, which arises when a Dp brane propagates in the vicinity of a stack of coincident NS5 branes, is due to the proper acceleration generated by the background dilaton field. We show that when a fundamental string (F-string), described by the Nambu–Goto action, is moving in the background of a stack of coincident Dp branes, the geometric tachyon mode can also appear since the overall conformal mode of the induced metric for the string can act as a source for proper acceleration. We also studied the detailed dynamics of the F-string as well as the instability by mapping the Nambu–Goto action of the F-string to the tachyon effective action of the non-BPS D-string. We qualitatively argue that the condensation of the geometric tachyon is responsible for the (F,Dp) bound state formation.

TACHYON DYNAMICS IN OPEN STRING THEORY

In this review we describe our current understanding of the properties of open string tachyons on an unstable D-brane or brane–antibrane system in string theory. The various string theoretic methods used for this study include techniques of two-dimensional conformal field theory, open string field theory, boundary string field theory, noncommutative solitons, etc. We also describe various attempts to understand these results using field theoretic methods. These field theory models include toy models like singular potential models and p-adic string theory, as well as more realistic version of the tachyon effective action based on Dirac–Born–Infeld type action. Finally we study closed string background produced by the "decaying" unstable D-branes, both in the critical string theory and in the two-dimensional string theory, and describe the open string completeness conjecture that emerges out of this study. According to this conjecture the quantum dynamics of an unstable D-brane system is described by an internally consistent quantum open string field theory without any need to couple the system to closed strings. Each such system can be regarded as a part of the "hologram" describing the full string theory.

A TOY MODEL OF CLOSED STRING TACHYON EFFECTIVE ACTION

In this paper we propose the toy model of the closed string tachyon effective action that has marginal tachyon profile as its exact solution in case of constant or linear dilaton background. Then we will apply this model for description of two-dimensional bosonic string theory. We will find that the background configuration with the spatial dependent linear dilaton, flat space–time metric and marginal tachyon profile is the exact solution of our model even if we take into account backreaction of tachyon on dilaton and on metric.

Non-BPS Dp-Brane in the Background of NS5-Branes on Transverse R3 × S1

This paper is devoted to the study of non-BPS Dp-branes in the presence of NS5-branes on the transverse R3 × S1. We will formulate the tachyon effective action in this background and then we will discuss its properties. Then we will study the solutions of the equations of motion that describe lower dimensional BPS and non-BPS D-branes.

Vacuum States in 2D Tachyon Effective Action

In this paper we will study ground states of the toy model of 2D closed string tachyon effective action. We will firstly construct the classical solutions of the tachyon effective action that do not induce backreaction on metric and dilaton. Then we will study the quantum mechanics of the zero mode of the tachyon field. We will find family of vacuum states that are labeled with single parameter. We will also perform the quantum mechanical analysis of the tachyon effective action when we take into account dynamics of nonzero modes. We will calculate the vacuum expectation values of components of the stress energy tensor and dilaton source and we will argue that there is not any backreaction on metric and dilaton.

Caustic Formation in Tachyon Effective Field Theories

Certain configurations of D-branes, for example wrong dimensional branes or the brane-antibrane system, are unstable to decay. This instability is described by the appearance of a tachyonic mode in the spectrum of open strings ending on the brane(s). The decay of these unstable systems is described by the rolling of the tachyon field from the unstable maximum to the minimum of its potential. We analytically study the dynamics of the inhomogeneous tachyon field as it rolls towards the true vacuum of the theory in the context of several different tachyon effective actions. We find that the vacuum dynamics of these theories is remarkably similar and in particular we show that in all cases the tachyon field forms caustics where second and higher derivatives of the field blow up. The formation of caustics signals a pathology in the evolution since each of the effective actions considered is not reliable in the vicinity of a caustic. We speculate that the formation of caustics is an artifact of truncating the tachyon action, which should contain all orders of derivatives acting on the field, to a finite number of derivatives. Finally, we consider inhomogeneous solutions in p-adic string theory, a toy model of the bosonic tachyon which contains derivatives of all orders acting on the field. For a large class of initial conditions we conclusively show that the evolution is well behaved in this case. It is unclear if these caustics are a genuine prediction of string theory or not.

Proposal for the Open String Tachyon Effective Action in the Linear Dilaton Background

In this paper we propose tachyon effective actions for unstable D-branes in superstring and bosonic string theories in the presence of the linear dilaton background.

Notes on tachyon effective actions and Veneziano amplitudes

In a previous paper (hep-th/0304045) it has been argued that tachyonic Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) actions can be obtained from open string theory in a limit, which generalizes the usual massless DBI limit. In the present note we review this construction focusing on a key property of the proposed tachyon effective actions: how they reproduce appropriate Veneziano amplitudes in a suitably defined kinematical region. Possible extensions and interesting open problems are briefly discussed.

Exact potential and scattering amplitudes from the tachyon non-linear -function

We compute, on the disk, the non-linear tachyon $\beta$-function, $\beta^T$, of the open bosonic string theory. $\beta^T$ is determined both in an expansion to the third power of the field and to all orders in derivatives and in an expansion to any power of the tachyon field in the leading order in derivatives. We construct the Witten-Shatashvili (WS) space-time effective action $S$ and prove that it has a very simple universal form in terms of the renormalized tachyon field and $\beta^T$. The expression for $S$ is well suited to studying both processes that are far off-shell, such as tachyon condensation, and close to the mass-shell, such as perturbative on-shell amplitudes. We evaluate $S$ in a small derivative expansion, providing the exact tachyon potential. The normalization of $S$ is fixed by requiring that the field redefinition that maps $S$ into the tachyon effective action derived from the cubic string field theory is regular on-shell. The normalization factor is in precise agreement with the one required for verifying all the conjectures on tachyon condensation. The coordinates in the space of couplings in which the tachyon $\beta$-function is non linear are the most appropriate to study RG fixed points that can be interpreted as solitons of $S$, $i.e.$ D-branes.

Bosonic D-brane Effective Action in Linear Dilaton Background

In this paper we will study tachyon effective action for Dp-brane in bosonic string theory in the linear dilaton background. We obtain the tachyon effective Lagrangian from boundary state coeficient of Dp-brane in the linear dilaton background and compare it with tachyon effective Lagrangians that were proposed in previous papers.

D-Brane Effective Actions and Particle Production near the Beginning of the Tachyon Condensation

In this paper we will study the quantum field theory of fluctuation modes around the classical solution that describes tachyon condensation on unstable D-brane.We will calculate the number of particle produced near the beginning of the rolling tachyon process. We will perform this calculation for different tachyon effective actions and we will find that the rate of the particle production strongly depends on the form of the effective action used for the description of the early stage of the tachyon condensation.

Tachyon kinks on non-BPS D-branes

We consider solitonic solutions of the DBI tachyon effective action for a non-BPS brane. When wrapped on a circle, these solutions are regular and have a finite energy. We show that in the decompactified limit, these solitons give Sen's infinitely thin finite energy kink—interpreted as a BPS brane—provided that some conditions on the potential hold. In particular, if for large T the potential is exponential, V=e−Ta, then Sen's solution is only found for a<1. For power-law potentials V=1/Tb, one must have b>1. If these conditions are not satisfied, we show that the lowest energy configuration is the unstable tachyon vacuum with no kinks. We examine the stability of the solitons and the spectrum of small perturbations.

Experimental string field theory

We develop efficient algorithms for level-truncation computations in open bosonic string field theory. We determine the classical action in the universal subspace to level (18,54) and apply this knowledge to numerical evaluations of the tachyon condensate string field. We obtain two main sets of results. First, we directly compute the solutions up to level L=18 by extremizing the level-truncated action. Second, we obtain predictions for the solutions for L > 18 from an extrapolation to higher levels of the functional form of the tachyon effective action. We find that the energy of the stable vacuum overshoots -1 (in units of the brane tension) at L=14, reaches a minimum E_min = -1.00063 at L ~ 28 and approaches with spectacular accuracy the predicted answer of -1 as L -> infinity. Our data are entirely consistent with the recent perturbative analysis of Taylor and strongly support the idea that level-truncation is a convergent approximation scheme. We also check systematically that our numerical solution, which obeys the Siegel gauge condition, actually satisfies the full gauge-invariant equations of motion. Finally we investigate the presence of analytic patterns in the coefficients of the tachyon string field, which we are able to reliably estimate in the L -> infinity limit.

Tachyon effective actions in open string theory

We argue that the Dirac–Born–Infeld (DBI) action coupled to a tachyon, that is known to reproduce some aspects of open string dynamics, can be obtained from open string theory in a certain limit, which generalizes the limit leading to the usual DBI action. This helps clarify which aspects of the full open string theory are captured by this action.

Wess-Zumino term in tachyon effective action

We show that the source of RR field computed from the boundary state describing the decay of a non-BPS brane is reproduced by a particular form of the Wess-Zumino term in the tachyon effective action. We also obtain a simple expression of the S-charge associated with rolling tachyons.

Off-shell extension of S-matrix elements and tachyonic effective actions

We show that the on-shell S-matrix elements of four open string massless scalars, two scalars and two tachyons, and four open string tachyons in the super string theory can be written in a unique form. We then propose an off-shell extension for the S-matrix element of four scalars which is consistent, in the low energy limit, with the Dirac-Born-Infeld effective action. Using a similar off-shell extension for the S-matrix element of two scalars and two tachyons and for the S-matrix element of four tachyons, we show that they are fully consistent with the tachyonic DBI action.