Closed strings from decaying D-branes

Abstract

We compute the emission of closed string radiation from homogeneous rolling tachyons. For an unstable decaying D$p$-brane the radiated energy is infinite to leading order for $p\le 2$ and finite for $p>2$. The closed string state produced by a decaying brane is closely related to the state produced by D-instantons at a critical Euclidean distance from $t=0$. In the case of a D0 brane one can cutoff this divergence so that we get a finite energy final state which would be the state that the brane decays into.

harvmac, 30 pages, 2 figures. v3: Improved discussion for non compact branes