Charged Tachyons and Gauge Symmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This paper explores how charged tachyon condensation in heterotic string theory on a Kaluza-Klein Melvin background affects gauge symmetry, revealing that gauge group rank often remains unchanged contrary to naive expectations.

Contribution

It provides a duality-based analysis of charged tachyon condensation and its impact on gauge symmetry in heterotic string theory.

Findings

Gauge group rank often remains unchanged after tachyon condensation.

Duality arguments support the stability of gauge symmetry.

Naive expectations of gauge symmetry breaking are challenged.

Abstract

We discuss the condensation of charged tachyons in the heterotic theory on the Kaluza-Klein Melvin background. The arguments are based on duality relations which are expected to hold from the adiabatic argument. It is argued that in many cases the rank of the gauge group is not changed by the condensation, as opposed to naive expectations.