Winding Strings and Decay of D-Branes with Flux

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the decay of an unstable D-brane with a uniform electric field, showing that the decay produces winding closed strings carrying a fraction of the energy, and that the decay dynamics are significantly affected by the electric field.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the decay process is dominated by winding closed strings with energy proportional to the electric field, supporting a specific final state conjecture.

Findings

Decay produces winding closed strings with energy fraction e.

Winding strings have heavy oscillations in the final state.

Decay disperses into spacetime more slowly with electric field.

Abstract

We study the boundary state associated with the decay of an unstable D-brane with uniform electric field, 1>e>0 in the string units. Compactifying the D-brane along the direction of the electric field, we find that the decay process is dominated by production of closed strings with some winding numbers; closed strings produced are such that the winding mode carries precisely the fraction $e$ of the individual string energy. This supports the conjecture that the final state at tree level is composed of winding strings with heavy oscillations turned on. As a corollary, we argue that the closed strings disperse into spacetime at a much slower rate than the case without electric field.