Closed String Tachyons and Their Implications for Non-Supersymmetric Strings

Abstract

Closed string tachyons have long been somewhat mysterious. We note that there is often a regime in the classical moduli space in which one can systematically compute the effective action for such fields. In this regime, the tachyon is light, and cannot be integrated out. Instead, one must consider the combined dynamics of gravitons, moduli, tachyons and other light fields. We compute the action and find that the quartic term for the tachyon is positive in the field definition where the tachyon has no derivative coupling to the radion. We study the evolution of isotropic, homogeneous configurations and find that typically the system is driven to regions where the calculation is no longer under control.

10 pages, no figures, references added

References in corpus (8)

• Tachyon Condensation on the Brane Antibrane System
• Descent Relations Among Bosonic D-branes
• Tachyon condensation in string field theory
• D-Branes and Dual Gauge Theories in Type 0 String Theory
• Magnetic backgrounds and tachyonic instabilities in closed superstring theory and M-theory
• Closed-String Tachyons and the Hagedorn Transition in AdS Space
• Supersymmetric fluxbrane intersections and closed string tachyons
• On the Effective Potential of the Dp- anti Dp system in type II theories

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Perturbative Search for Fixed Lines in Large N Gauge Theories
• Rolling Closed String Tachyons and the Big Crunch
• String Stars in Anti de Sitter Space
• Effective field theory for closed strings near the Hagedorn temperature
• Closed String Tachyon Condensation in Supercritical Strings and RG Flows
• Hagedorn divergences and tachyon potential
• On Witten's Instability and Winding Tachyons
• Tachyons in Compact Spaces
• The heterotic string at high temperature (or with strong supersymmetry breaking)
• On the Entropy of Strings and Branes
• Thermal Equilibrium in String Theory in the Hagedorn Phase