Closed String Tachyon Condensation and Worldsheet Inflation

Abstract

Closed string tachyon condensation in spacetime generates potentials on the worldsheet that model two-dimensional inflationary cosmology. These models illustrate and elucidate a variety of aspects of inflation, in particular the generation of quantum fluctuations and their back-reaction on geometry. We exhibit a class of Liouville gravity models coupled to matter that can exhibit, for example: (a) pure de Sitter gravity; (b) slow-roll inflation; (c) topological inflation; and (d) graceful exit into an FRW phase. The models also provide a quantitative testing ground for ideas about the origin of inflation, such as the various `no-boundary/tunnelling' proposals, and the `eternal/chaotic' inflationary scenario. We suggest an alternative mechanism for quantum creation of cosmological spacetimes which, in the context of the model, provides a natural explanation for why the typical FRW cosmology at large scales underwent a period of inflation at small scale.

40 pages, latex, 8 .eps figures; v2: typos and an error in the pair production rate corrected, a few comments added

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• Lectures on Cosmic Inflation and its Potential Stringy Realizations
• Closed String Tachyon Condensation: An Overview
• Twisted Tachyon Condensation in Closed String Field Theory
• The Rolling Tachyon as a Matrix Model
• Closed String Tachyon Condensation at c=1
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• Rolling Closed String Tachyons and the Big Crunch
• Notes on Liouville Theory at c<=1
• The Harder They Fall, the Bigger They Become: Tidal Trapping of Strings by Microstate Geometries
• Matrix Membrane Big Bangs and D-brane Production
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• A Matrix Model for the Null-Brane
• Liouville theory and Matrix models: A Wheeler DeWitt perspective
• On Solvable Time-Dependent Model and Rolling Closed String Tachyon
• Auto-localization in de-Sitter space
• Quantum Gravity from Timelike Liouville theory
• Modeling Quantum Gravity Effects in Inflation
• Quantum Cosmology Near Two Dimensions
• Off-Shell Interactions for Closed-String Tachyons
• Matrix Model and Time-like Linear Dilaton Matter
• Closed String Tachyon Condensation in Supercritical Strings and RG Flows
• Crumpled Wires and Liouville Field Theory
• Correlators in Timelike Bulk Liouville Theory
• Quantum Cosmology Aspects Of D3 Branes and Tachyon Dynamics
• Inflation in String Field Theory
• Decay of type 0 NS5-branes to nothing
• Gravitational action for a massive Majorana fermion in 2d quantum gravity
• Tachyon Effective Dynamics and de Sitter Vacua
• De Sitter Quantum Mechanics and Inflationary Matrix Cosmology of Self-tuned Universe
• Primordial fluctuations in extended Liouville theory
• Exactly Solvable Supercritical String Theories?
• Universe Decay, Inflation and the Large Eigenvalue of the Cosmological Constant Seesaw