Real-time D-brane condensation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the real-time formation of lower-dimensional brane defects from unstable D-branes using tachyon effective field theory, revealing divergence in kink slope and implications for reheating after brane inflation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the dynamical formation of codimension one defects in tachyon fields and analyzes the divergence of kink slope during decay, providing insights into brane decay processes.

Findings

Kink slope diverges in finite time during decay

Formation of codimension one defects from unstable D-branes

Implications for reheating after brane-antibrane inflation

Abstract

Unstable D-branes or brane-antibrane systems can decay to lower-dimensional branes. In the effective field theory description, the final state branes are defects in the tachyon field which describes the initial instability. We study the dynamical formation of codimension one defects (kinks) using Sen's ansatz for the tachyon Lagrangian. It is shown that the slope of the kink diverges within a finite amount of time after the tachyon starts to roll. We discuss the relevance for reheating after brane-antibrane inflation.