Inter-Brane Potential and the Decay of a non-BPS-D-brane to Closed Strings

TL;DR

This paper calculates the potential for Dp-anti-Dp brane pairs, analyzes tachyonic modes, and proposes that the decay width of unstable non-BPS Dp-branes to closed strings is derived from the imaginary part of the open string tachyon's one-loop effective potential.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute the decay width of non-BPS Dp-branes to closed strings using the imaginary part of the open string tachyon potential.

Findings

Identifies (11-p) tachyonic modes in the Dp-anti-Dp system.

Shows (9-p) tachyonic modes arise from radiative corrections.

Proposes decay width is given by the imaginary part of the one-loop potential.

Abstract

We calculate the potential for $Dp-\Dbar p$ pair and show that the coincident $Dp-\Dbar p$ system has $(11-p)$ tachyonic modes, with $(9-p)$ of them due to radiative corrections. We propose that the decay width of an unstable non-BPS-$Dp$-brane to closed strings is given by the imaginary part of the one-loop contribution to the effective potential of the open string tachyon mode.