The Tachyon does Matter

TL;DR

This paper reviews S-branes and analyzes how tachyon matter's gravitational backreaction influences time-dependent processes, demonstrating its significance through the example of the S0-brane in Einstein-Maxwell theory.

Contribution

It introduces the analysis of tachyon matter backreaction in time-dependent backgrounds using effective spacetime descriptions and exemplifies this with the S0-brane case.

Findings

Gravitational backreaction of tachyon matter is significant in time-dependent processes.

The S0-brane example illustrates the importance of backreaction in Einstein-Maxwell theory.

Effective spacetime descriptions can capture tachyon matter dynamics.

Abstract

We review the concept of S-branes introduced by Gutperle and Strominger hep-th/0202210. Using the effective spacetime description of the rolling tachyon worldsheets discussed by Sen, we analyze the possibility that the gravitational backreaction of tachyon matter is important in the time-dependent process. We show that this is indeed the case in the example of the S0-brane in 4-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory. This talk is based on hep-th/0207235.