Rolling tachyon in anti-de Sitter space-time

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decay process of an unstable D-particle in AdS3 space, analyzing closed string emission and energy distribution, and tests the open string completeness conjecture within a holographic context.

Contribution

It provides an exact boundary state construction for D-particle decay in AdS3 and examines energy conversion into long strings, challenging existing conjectures.

Findings

Energy mainly converts into highly excited long strings.

No missing energy problem observed in the decay process.

Decay results differ from flat space and linear dilaton backgrounds.

Abstract

We study the decay of the unstable D-particle in three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space-time using worldsheet boundary conformal field theory methods. We test the open string completeness conjecture in a background for which the phase space available is only field-theoretic. This could present a serious challenge to the claim. We compute the emission of closed strings in the AdS(3) x S^3 x T^4 background from the knowledge of the exact corresponding boundary state we construct. We show that the energy stored in the brane is mainly converted into very excited long strings. The energy stored in short strings and in open string pair production is much smaller and finite for any value of the string coupling. We find no "missing energy" problem. We compare our results to those obtained for a decay in flat space-time and to a background in the presence of a linear dilaton. Some remarks on holographic aspects of the problem are made.