Bosonic Open Strings in a Tachyonic Background Field

TL;DR

This paper investigates bosonic open strings in a tachyonic background, revealing that the tachyon field can be interpreted as D-branes at specific points, with detailed analysis for quadratic tachyon profiles.

Contribution

It introduces a dual interpretation of the open string tachyon as D-branes at zeros or critical points of the tachyon field, especially for quadratic potentials.

Findings

Tachyon field can be replaced by D-branes at zeros or critical points.

Explicit analysis provided for quadratic tachyonic fields.

Dual picture offers new insights into open string tachyon dynamics.

Abstract

We study a bosonic open string coupled to a tachyonic background field $T[X]$ and find that the tachyon field can effectively be replaced by a configuration of D-branes placed at either the zeros or the critical points of $T[X]$, depending on our choice of boundary conditions. This dual picture of the open string tachyon is explored in detail for the explicit case when the tachyonic field is quadratic.