Decaying D-branes and Moving Mirrors

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact solution for inhomogeneous D-brane decay, analyzing quantum energy flux and its thermal and negative phases, with implications for cosmological reheating and string network evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel exact time-dependent solution for decaying D-branes and links quantum flux behavior to moving mirror models.

Findings

Energy flux initially thermal at brane-antibrane distance

Flux reverses sign, becoming negative energy flux

Potential relevance for cosmological reheating and string evolution

Abstract

We present an exact time-dependent solution to the effective D-brane world-volume theory which describes an inhomogeneous decay of a brane-antibrane system. We compute the quantum energy flux induced by the particle creation in this inhomogeneous and time-dependent background. We find that this calculation is essentially equivalent to that of the moving mirror system. In the initial stage, the energy flux turns out to be thermal with the temperature given by the inverse of the distance between the brane and the antibrane. Later it changes its sign and becomes a negative energy flux. Our result may be relevant for the (p)reheating process or/and the evolution of cosmic string network after stringy brane inflation.