The Fate of Massive Closed Strings

TL;DR

This paper calculates the decay rates of massive closed strings in superstring theory with compactification, revealing suppression of decay into massive strings and enhancement for massless radiation, with applications to brane-inflation models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of semi-inclusive decay rates of average string states in compactified superstring theory, including effects in warped geometries.

Findings

Decay rate is greatly suppressed for massive final strings.

Decay into massless radiation is significantly enhanced.

Results have implications for brane-inflation cosmological models.

Abstract

We calculate the semi-inclusive decay rate of an average string state with toroidal compactification in the the superstring theory. We also apply this calculation to a brane-inflation model in a warped geometry and find that the decay rate is greatly suppressed if the final strings are both massive and enhanced for massless radiation.