Closed string tachyons, flips and conifolds

TL;DR

This paper investigates nonsupersymmetric conifold singularities, demonstrating their instability due to closed string tachyons, and describes how flip transitions mediate topology change between different small resolutions.

Contribution

It introduces a toric geometry analysis of nonsupersymmetric conifolds as orbifolds and shows their decay via tachyon condensation and flip transitions.

Findings

Nonsupersymmetric conifolds are unstable to tachyon condensation.

Flip transitions connect different small resolutions.

3-cycle deformations are obstructed in these singularities.

Abstract

Following the analysis of tachyons and orbifold flips described in hep-th/0412337, we study nonsupersymmetric analogs of the supersymmetric conifold singularity and show using their toric geometry description that they are nonsupersymmetric orbifolds of the latter. Using linear sigma models, we see that these are unstable to localized closed string tachyon condensation and exhibit flip transitions between their two small resolutions (involving 2-cycles), in the process mediating mild dynamical topology change. Our analysis shows that the structure of these nonsupersymmetric conifolds as quotients of the supersymmetric conifold obstructs the 3-cycle deformation of such singularities, suggesting that these nonsupersymmetric conifolds decay by evolving towards their stable small resolutions.