Related papers: Closed String Tachyons and Semi-Classical Instabil…
This paper analyzes the effect of curved closed string backgrounds on the stability of D-branes within boundary string field theory. We identify the non-local open string background that implements shifts in the closed string background and…
We consider bulk tachyon condensations in a non-linear sigma model whose low energy effective theory contains a nontrivial scalar potential. We argue that one would typically encounter a strong coupling background along a RG flow…
We consider a D-brane probe in unstable string background associated with flux branes. The twist in spacetime metric reponsible for the supersymmetry breaking is shown to manifest itself in mixing of open Wilson lines with the phases of…
We find an interesting connection between perturbative large N gauge theory and closed superstrings. The gauge theory in question is found on N D3-branes placed at the tip of the cone R^6/Gamma. In our previous work we showed that, when the…
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…
When supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at tree level, the spectrum of the heterotic string compactified on orbifolds of tori contains an infinite number of potentially tachyonic modes. We show that this implies instabilities of…
It has been shown recently that by turning on a large noncommutativity parameter, the description of tachyon condensation in string theory can be drastically simplified. We reconsider these issues from the standpoint of string field theory,…
We present a cosmological landscape where the classical closed string tachyon field plays an important role in the framework of a critical bosonic compactification. Our cosmological solutions for a universe with constant curvature describes…
Superstring theories in the critical dimension D=10 are connected to one another by a well-explored web of dualities. In this paper we use closed-string tachyon condensation to connect the supersymmetric moduli space of the critical…
We study the late time behavior of the boundary state representing the rolling tachyon constructed by Sen. It is found that the coupling of the rolling tachyon to massive modes of the closed string grows exponentially as the system evolves.…
In this thesis we investigate some aspects of the dramatic consequences of supersymmetry breaking on string vacua. In particular, we focus on the issue of vacuum stability in ten-dimensional string models with broken, or without,…
We investigate maximally symmetric backgrounds in nonsupersymmetric string vacua with D-branes and O-planes localized in the compact space. We find a class of solutions with a perturbative string coupling constant in all regions of…
We present an exact solution of superstring theory that interpolates in time between an initial type 0 phase and a final phase whose physics is exactly that of the bosonic string. The initial theory is deformed by closed-string tachyon…
The consistency of string theory as a theory of gravity does not rely on the presence of spacetime supersymmetry; however, its absence leads to the emergence of tadpole diagrams in the on-shell worldsheet formulation, thus undermining our…
The potential of the closed bosonic bulk tachyon is investigated using $\mathcal{N}~=~1$ closed superstring field theory formulated around Berkovits' and Vafas embedding of the bosonic string into the superstring. From this point of view…
We propose a refinement of the physical picture describing different vacua in bosonic string theory. The vacua with closed strings and open strings are connected by the string field theory version of the Higgs mechanism, generalizing the…
A recent paper by Gross and Erler (hep-th/0406199) showed that by making a certain well-defined, unitary transformation on the mode basis for the open bosonic string--one that identifies the lightcone component of position with the string…
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…
Starting with exact solutions to string theory on curved spacetimes we obtain deformations that represent gravitational shock waves. These may exist in the presence or absence of sources. Sources are effectively induced by a tachyon field…
We consider non-supersymmetric four-dimensional closed string theories constructed out of tensor products of N=2 minimal models. Generically such theories have closed string tachyons, but these may be removed either by choosing a…