Noncommutative Tachyons

TL;DR

This paper explores how noncommutative geometry affects tachyon condensation on unstable D-branes in string theory, revealing new decay modes into lower-dimensional branes, some of which are metastable.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of tachyon condensation as noncommutative solitons, leading to new decay pathways and configurations in string theory.

Findings

Decay of Dp-branes into (p-2)-branes via noncommutative solitons

Identification of metastable brane configurations

Generalization of decay processes in noncommutative settings

Abstract

When unstable Dp-branes in type II string theory are placed in a B-field, the resulting tachyonic world-volume theory becomes noncommutative. We argue that for large noncommutativity parameter, condensation of the tachyon as a noncommutative soliton leads to new decay modes of the Dp-brane into (p-2)-brane configurations, which we interpret as suitably smeared BPS D(p-1)-branes. Some of these configurations are metastable. We discuss various generalizations of this decay process.