The Final Fate of the Rolling Tachyon

TL;DR

This paper offers a new interpretation of the boundary state for the rolling tachyon, illustrating the decay of unstable D-branes into S-branes through a fermion representation, emphasizing time-dependent dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative boundary state interpretation and demonstrates decay dynamics using fermion representation, advancing understanding of D-brane decay in string theory.

Findings

Boundary state correctly describes D-brane decay into S-branes.

Fermion representation captures time-dependent behavior.

Classical and quantum splitting elucidates decay process.

Abstract

We propose an alternative interpretation of the boundary state for the rolling tachyon, which may depict the time evolution of unstable D-branes in string theory. Splitting the string variable in the temporal direction into the classical part, which we may call "time" and the quantum one, we observe the time dependent behaviour of the boundary. Using the fermion representation of the rolling tachyon boundary state, we show that the boundary state correctly describes the time-dependent decay process of the unstable D-brane into a S-brane at the classical level.