English

Cosmological tachyon from cubic string field theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-11-11 v4 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The classical dynamics of the tachyon scalar field of cubic string field theory is considered on a cosmological background. Starting from a nonlocal action with arbitrary tachyon potential, which encodes the bosonic and several supersymmetric cases, we study the equations of motion in the Hamilton-Jacobi formalism and with a generalized Friedmann equation, appliable in braneworld or modified gravity models. The cases of cubic (bosonic) and quartic (supersymmetric) tachyon potential in general relativity are automatically included. We comment the validity of the slow-roll approximation, the stability of the cosmological perturbations, and the relation between this tachyon and the Dirac-Born-Infeld one.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0512259,
  title  = {Cosmological tachyon from cubic string field theory},
  author = {Gianluca Calcagni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0512259},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

20 pages JHEP style, 1 figure; v4: misprints corrected, matches the published version

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:33:55.408Z