We survey barrier penetration by quantum tunneling for four cases: nonrelativistic point particles, scalar fields, relativistic point particles, and DBI branes. We examine two novel features that arise for DBI brane tunneling: the rate can sometimes increase as the barrier gets higher; and the instanton "wrinkles". We show that these features can be understood as the effect of the quantum sea of virtual brane-antibrane pairs. This sea exponentially augments the decay rate, with possible cosmological consequences.
We construct in the supergravity framework a relation between thermal chargeless non-extremal black three-branes and thermal Dirichlet branes-antibranes systems. We propose this relation as a possible explanation for the intriguing similarity between the black branes Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and the field theory entropy of thermal branes-antibranes. We comment on various relations between branes, antibranes and non-BPS branes in type II string theories.
We investigate an action which resembles the effective action of brane-antibrane system derived from boundary string field theory. We find that the action has smooth vortex solutions which saturate the Bogomol'nyi bound.
In this paper we give the boundary string field theory description of brane-antibrane systems. From the world-sheet action of brane-antibrane systems we obtain the tachyon potential and discuss the tachyon condensation exactly. We also find the world-volume action including the gauge fields. Moreover we determine RR-couplings exactly for non-BPS branes and brane-antibranes. These couplings are written by superconnections and correspond to K^1(M) and K^0(M) for the non-BPS branes and brane-antibranes, respectively. We also show that Myers terms appear if we include the transverse scalars in the…
We generalize our study of the tachyon condensation on the brane-antibrane system [hep-th/0403147] to the intersecting brane-antibrane system. The supergravity solutions of the intersecting brane-antibrane system are characterized by five parameters. We relate these parameters to the microscopic physical parameters, namely, the number of D$p$-branes ($N_1$), the number of ${\bar {\rm D}}p$-branes (${\bar N}_1$), the number of D$(p-4)$-branes ($N_2)$, the number of ${\bar{\rm D}}(p-4)$-branes (${\bar N}_2$) and the tachyon vev $T$. We show that the solution and the ADM mass capture all the requ…
String theories with branes can often be generalized by adding brane-antibrane pairs. We explore the cancellation of anomalies in this more general context, extending the familiar anomaly-cancelling mechanisms, both for ten-dimensional string theories with D-branes and for certain supersymmetric compactifications.
We discuss in a systematic way all the possible realisations of branes of M and type II theories as topological solitons of a brane-antibrane system. The classification of all the possibilities, consistent with the structure of the theory, is achieved by studying the Wess-Zumino terms in the worldvolume effective actions of the branes of M-theory and their reductions.
Couplings between a closed string RR field and open strings are calculated in a system of coincident branes and antibranes of type II theory. The result can be written cleanly using the curvature of the superconnection.
In type II string theories, we examine intersecting brane constructions containing brane-antibrane pairs suspended between 5-branes, and more general non-BPS constructions. The tree-level spectra are obtained in each case. We identify various models with distinct physics: parallel brane-antibrane pairs, adjacent pairs, non-adjacent pairs, and configurations which break all supersymmetry even though any pair of branes preserves some supersymmetry. In each case we examine the possible decay modes. Some of these configurations turn out to be tachyon-free, stable non-BPS states. We use T-duality t…
We propose a correspondence between brane-antibrane systems and stable triples (E_1,E_2,T), where E_1,E_2 are holomorphic vector bundles and the tachyon T is a map between them. We demonstrate that, under the assumption of holomorphicity, the brane-antibrane field equations reduce to a set of vortex equations, which are equivalent to the mathematical notion of stability of the triple. We discuss some examples and show that the theory of stable triples suggests a new notion of BPS bound states and stability, and curious relations between brane-antibrane configurations and wrapped branes in high…
Recently a number of authors have used a system of branes and antibranes at finite temperature for microscopic modeling of non-extremal black holes in string theory. The entropy of the system is derived from the simplified assumption of decoupled gas of open strings on the stacks of branes and antibranes and extremizing the total entropy with respect to the number of branes (or antibranes). The resulting entropy differs from the supergravity entropy by a deficit factor. We give an intuitive explanation for the deficit factor. We treat the whole system as two stacks of branes and antibranes wit…
In this note, we will discuss two aspects of brane-antibrane forces. In one aspect, we generalize the force calculation of D0-${\bar {\rm D}}$0 of Banks and Susskind to Dp-${\bar {\rm D}}p$ for $1\le p \leq 8$. In particular, we find that the force is also divergent for p = 1 while for the other cases ($p \ge 2$) the forces are in general finite when $Z \to 0^+$, where $Z = \frac{Y^2}{2π^2α'} - 1$ with Y, the brane-antibrane separation. However, the forces are divergent for all cases when Z < 0, signalling the occurrence of open string tachyon condensation in this regime. The other deals with …
In a tachyon effective field theory of a non-BPS brane, we construct a classical solution representing a parallel brane-antibrane. The solution is made of a kink and an antikink placed at antipodal points of S^1. Estimation of the brane energy suggests an excitation of a string connecting the two branes, even though the theory is Abelian. We performed fluctuation analysis around the obtained solution, and find the structure of the supersymmetry breaking by the co-existence of the brane and the antibrane. We discuss possible processes of the pair-annihilation of the brane defect.
We compute the force between a stack of smeared antibranes at the bottom of a warped throat and a stack of smeared branes at some distance up the throat, both for anti-D3 branes and for anti-M2 branes. We perform this calculation in two ways: first, by treating the antibranes as probes in the background sourced by the branes and second, by treating the branes as probes in the candidate background sourced by the antibranes. These two very different calculations yield exactly the same expression for the force, for all values of the brane-antibrane separation. This indicates that the force betwee…
We find a class of flat supersymmetric brane-antibrane configurations. They follow from ordinary brane-antibrane systems by turning on a specific worldvolume background electric field, which corresponds to dissolved fundamental strings. We have clarified in detail how they arise and identified their constituent charges as well as the corresponding supergravity solutions. Adopting the matrix theory description, we construct the worldvolume gauge theories and prove the absence of any tachyonic degrees. We also study supersymmetric solitons of the worldvolume theories.
It has been conjectured that the vortex solution on a D-brane - anti-D-brane system represents a D-brane of two lower dimension. We establish this result by first identifying a series of marginal deformations which create the vortex - antivortex pair on the brane - antibrane system, and then showing that under this series of marginal deformations the original D-brane - anti-D-brane system becomes a D-brane - anti-D-brane system with two lower dimensions. Generalization of this construction to the case of solitons of higher codimension is also discussed.
A precise form of the time evolution of rolling tachyons corresponding to a brane-antibrane pair is investigated by solving the Hamiltonian equations of motion under the assumption that in a region far away from branes the tachyon vacuum is almost already achieved, even at the beginning of the rolling.
Crossing symmetry appears in Dbrane-anti-Dbrane dynamics in the form of an analytic continuation from U(N) for N brane amplitudes to U(N-p,p) for the interactions of N-p branes with p anti-branes. I consider the consequences for supersymmetry and brane-anti-brane forces.
We obtain the enropy of Schwarzschild and charged black holes in D>4 from superconformal gases that live on p=10-D dimensional brane-antibrane systems wrapped on T^p. The preperties of the strongly coupled superconformal theories such as the appearance of hidden dimensions (for p=1,4) and fractional strings (for p=5) are crucial for our results. In all cases, the Schwarzschild radius is given by the transverse fluctuations of the branes and antibranes due to the finite temperature. We show that our results can be generalized to multicharged black holes.
We develop the point of view that brane actions should be understood in the context of effective field theory, and that this is the correct way to treat classical as well as loop divergences. We illustrate this idea in a simple model. We then consider the implications for the dynamics of antibranes in flux backgrounds, focusing on the simplest case of a single antibrane. We argue that there is no tachyonic instability at zero temperature, but there is a nonperturbative process in which an antibrane annihilates with its screening cloud. This is distinct from the NS5-brane instanton decay. Const…
The interaction between a parallel brane-antibrane and brane-antibrane is investigated by regarding the brane-antibrane pair as a kink or anti-kink type tachyon condensed state. As the kink-type tachyon condensed state is known as a non-BPS brane we expand the Lagrangian of tachyon effective field theory to the quadratic order in the off-diagonal fluctuation and then use the zeta-function regularization and Schwinger perturbative formula to evaluate the interaction within a kink-kink or a kink-antikink. The results show that while the kink and kink has repulsive force the kink and anti-kink ha…
We describe a tachyon-free stable non-BPS brane configuration in type IIA string theory. The configuration is an elliptic model involving rotated NS5 branes, D4 branes and anti-D4 branes, and is dual to a fractional brane-antibrane pair placed at a conifold singularity. This configuration exhibits an interesting behaviour as we vary the radius of the compact direction. Below a critical radius the D4 and anti-D4 branes are aligned, but as the radius increases above the critical value the potential between them develops a minimum away from zero. This signals a phase transition to a configuration…
We consider D-brane/anti-D-brane systems at T>0. Starting at the closed string vacuum, we argue that a finite temperature leads to the reappearance of open string degrees of freedom. We also show that, at a sufficiently large temperature, the open string vacuum becomes stable. Building upon this observation and previous work by Horowitz, Maldacena and Strominger, we formulate a microscopic brane-antibrane model for the non-extremal black three-brane in ten dimensions (as well as for the black two- and five-branes in eleven dimensions). Under reasonable assumptions, and using known results from…
The Tachyon-Dirac-Born-Infeld (TDBI) action captures some aspects of the dynamics of non-BPS D-branes in type II string theory. We show that it can also be used to study the classical interactions of BPS branes and antibranes. Our analysis sheds light on real time D-Dbar tachyon condensation, on the proposal that the tachyon field can be thought of as an extra spatial dimension whose role is similar to the radial direction in holography, and on A. Sen's open string completeness conjecture.
We study the backreaction of smeared and localised anti M2-branes placed at the tip of the CGLP background. To this end we derive a Smarr relation for backreacted antibranes at zero and finite temperature. For extremal antibranes we show that if smeared they cannot have regular horizons, whereas localised M2-branes can potentially be regular when polarised into M5-branes, in agreement with the probe result of Klebanov and Pufu. We further discuss antibranes at finite temperature and argue that localised antibrane solutions with regular horizons are not excluded.
String theory has few or no stable nonsupersymmetric or de Sitter vacua, only metastable ones. Antibranes are a simple source of supersymmetry breaking, as in the KKLT model, but various arguments have been given that these fail to produce the desired vacua. Proper analysis of the system requires identifying the correct effective field theories at various scales. We find that it reproduces the KKLT conclusions. This is an expanded version of a talk presented at SUSY 2015, Lake Tahoe.
We construct new configurations of oppositely charged, static black hole pairs (diholes) in four dimensions which are solutions of low energy string/M-theory. The black holes are extremal and have four different charges. We also consider diholes in other theories with an arbitrary number of abelian gauge fields and scalars, where the black holes can be regarded as composite objects. We uplift the four-charge solutions to higher dimensions in order to describe intersecting brane-antibrane systems in string and M-theory. The properties of the strings and membranes stretched inbetween these brane…
We study analytically the dynamical formation of lower dimensional branes at the endpoint of brane-antibrane inflation through the condensation of topological defects of the tachyon field which describes the instability of the initial state. We then use this information to quantify the efficiency of the reheating which is due to the coupling of time dependent tachyon background to massless gauge fields which will be localized on the final state branes. We improve upon previous estimates indicating that this can be an efficient reheating mechanism for observers on the brane.
By explicit calculation, we show that the expansion of the disk level S-matrix element of one RR field, two open string tachyons and one gauge field that has been recently found corresponds to the derivative expansion of the Wess-Zumino action of D-brane-anti-D-brane systems.
Open superstring theory is formulated in terms of a nondegenerate supertranslation algebra. A supercharge for a tachyonic superstring can be also defined classically by taking into account the leakage of the supercurrent which is compensated by fermionic and bosonic auxiliary fields. The anticommutator of two supercharges of the tachyonic superstring does not contain the zero eigenvalue and so this string is not a BPS state. Brane-antibrane annihilation scenarios are described by these superalgebras defined on the sum of world-volumes of a D-brane, an anti-D-brane and a tachyonic superstring.
It has been conjectured that a pair of D5 - anti D5 branes wrapped on some non-trivial two cycle of a Calabi-Yau manifold becomes a stable BPS D3 brane in the presence of a very large B field and magnetic fluxes on their worldvolumes. We discuss this by considering the non-commutative field theory on the worldvolume of the pair of branes whose field multiplication is made with respect to two different * products due to the presence of different F fields on the two branes. The tachyonic field becomes massless for a specific choice of the magnetic fluxes and it allows a trivial solution. Our dis…
A coincident D-brane - anti-D-brane pair has a tachyonic mode. We present an argument showing that at the classical minimum of the tachyonic potential the negative energy density associated with the potential exactly cancels the sum of the tension of the brane and the anti-brane, thereby giving a configuration of zero energy density and restoring space-time supersymmetry.
After reviewing the supertubes and super brane-antibrane systems in the context of matrix model, we look for more general higher-dimensional configurations. For D3-bar{D3}, we find a non-trivial configuration with E cdot B not equal to 0 and describe the worldvolume gauge theory. We present the string probe of D3-bar{D3} system and study the decoupling limits leading to either noncommutative Super-Yang-Mills or NCOS theories with eight supercharges.
When D-branes are inserted in flux backgrounds of opposite charge, the resulting solution has a certain singularity in the fluxes. Recently it has been argued, using numerical solutions, that for anti-D3 branes in the Klebanov-Strassler background these singularities cannot be cloaked by a horizon, which strongly suggests they are not physical. In this note we provide an analytic proof that the singularity of all codimension-three antibrane solutions (such as anti-D6 branes in massive type IIA supergravity or anti-D3 branes smeared on the T^3 of R^3xT^3 with fluxes) cannot be hidden behind a h…
We use the `branes within branes' approach to study the appearance of stable $ (p-2)-branes and unstable (p-1)-branes in type II string theory from p-brane--p-antibrane pairs.Our goal is to describe the emergence of these lower dimensional branes from brane-antibrane pairs in string theory using a tractable gauge theory language. This is achieved by suspending the original p-brane--p-antibrane pair between two (p+2)-branes, and describing its dynamics in terms of the worldvolume gauge theory on the spectator (p+2)-branes. Instantons, monopoles, sphalerons and their higher-dimensional generaliz…
We study the effect of tachyon condensation on a brane antibrane pair in superstring theory separated in the transverse direction. The static properties of the tachyon potential analyzed using level truncated string field theory reproduces the desired property that the dependence of the minimum value of the potential on the initial distance of separation between the branes decreases as we include higher level terms. The rolling tachyon solution constructed using the conformal field theory methods shows that if the initial separation between the branes is less than a critical distance then the …
We calculate the disk level S-matrix element of one closed string RR field, two open string tachyons and one gauge field in type II superstring theory. An expansion for the S-matrix element has been found that its four leading order terms are reproduced exactly by the symmetric trace tachyon DBI and the Wess-Zumino actions of D-brane-anti-D-brane systems. Using this consistency, we have also found the first higher derivative correction to the some of the WZ terms.
We show that a previously proposed model based on a D3-brane--anti-D3-brane system at finite temperature can reproduce the low-frequency absorption and emission probabilities of the black threebrane of Type IIB supergravity arbitrarily far from extremality, for arbitrary partial waves of a minimal scalar field. Our calculations cover in particular the case of the neutral threebrane, which corresponds to the Schwarzschild black hole in seven dimensions. Our results provide not only significant evidence in favor of the brane-antibrane model, but also a rationale for the condition that the energi…
We study the tachyon condensation on the D-brane--antiD-brane system from the supergravity point of view. The non-supersymmetric supergravity solutions with symmetry ISO($p,1$) $\times$ SO($9-p$) are known to be characterized by three parameters. By interpreting this solution as coincident $N$ D$p$-branes and ${\bar N}$ ${\bar {\rm D}}p$-branes we give, for the first time, an explicit representation of the three parameters of supergravity solutions in terms of $N, \bar N$ and the tachyon vev. We demonstrate that the solution and the corresponding ADM mass capture all the required properties an…
Using D-brane effective field theories, we study dynamical decay of unstable brane systems : (i) a parallel brane-antibrane pair with separation l and (ii) a dielectric brane. In particular we give explicitly the decay width of these unstable systems, and describe how the decay proceeds after the tunnel effect. The decay (i) is analysed by the use of a tachyon effective action on the Dp-Dpbar. A pair annihilation starts by nucleation of a bubble of a tachyon domain wall which represents a throat connecting these branes, and the tunneling decay width is found to be proportional to exp(-l^{p+1} …
In order to study the thermodynamic properties of brane-antibrane systems, we compute the finite temperature effective potential of tachyon T in this system on the basis of boundary string field theory. At low temperature, the minimum of the potential shifts towards T=0 as the temperature increases. In the D9-antiD9 case, the sign of the coefficient of |T|^2 term of the potential changes slightly below the Hagedorn temperature. This means that a phase transition occurs near the Hagedorn temperature. On the other hand, the coefficient is kept negative in the Dp-antiDp case with p <= 8, and thus…
We consider tachyon condensation between a D-brane and an anti-D-brane in superstring theory, when they are separated in their common transverse directions. A simple rolling tachyon solution, that describes the time evolution of the process, is studied from the point of view of boundary conformal field theory. By computing the boundary beta-functions of the system, one finds that this theory is conformal, hence corresponds to an exact solution of the string theory equations of motion. By contrast, the time-reversal-symmetric rolling tachyon is not conformal. These results put constraints on th…
In the recent literature it has been questioned whether the local backreaction of antibranes in flux throats can induce a perturbative brane-flux decay. Most evidence for this can be gathered for D6 branes and Dp branes smeared over 6-p compact directions, in line with the absence of finite temperature solutions for these cases. The solutions in the literature have flat worldvolume geometries and non-compact transversal spaces. In this paper we consider what happens when the worldvolume is AdS and the transversal space is compact. We show that in these circumstances brane polarisation smoothen…
Antibranes provide some of the most generic ways to uplift Anti-de Sitter flux compactifications to de Sitter, and there is a growing body of evidence that antibranes placed in long warped throats such as the Klebanov-Strassler warped deformed conifold solution have a brane-brane-repelling tachyon. This tachyon was first found in the regime of parameters in which the backreaction of the antibranes is large, and its existence was inferred from a highly nontrivial cancellation of certain terms in the inter-brane potential. We use a brane effective action approach, similar to that proposed by Mic…
We describe rotating multicharge black holes as stacks of intersecting branes and antibranes together with massless gases on them. Assuming the energies of the gases to be equal, we find that their angular momentum parameters, corresponding to black hole rotations, are also equal. The entropy S of this model is given by S = X S_{sg} where S_{sg} is the supergravity entropy. One can obtain X = 1 under an assumption which violates conservation of energy. We show that X = 1 can also be obtained if one assumes that there is only one single gas, which is some sort of superposition of the gases ment…
We construct the SO(32) spinor state in weakly coupled type I string theory as a kink solution of the tachyon field on the D-string - anti-D-string pair and calculate its mass. We also give a description of this system in terms of an exact boundary conformal field theory and show that in this description this state can be regarded as a non-supersymmetric D0-brane in type I string theory. This construction can be generalised to represent the D0-brane in type IIA string theory as a vortex solution of the tachyon field on the membrane anti-membrane pair, and the D-string of type I string theory a…
The stringy description for the instabilities in the $RR$ charged $D_{p}-\bar{D}_{p}$ pairs is now well understood in terms of the open string tachyon condensation. The quantum interpretation presumably via the stringy description for the instabilities in the $NSNS$-charged $F1-\bar{F1}$ and $NS5-\bar{NS5}$ pairs in IIA/IIB theories, however, has not been established yet. This would be partly because of the absence (for the $F1-\bar{F1}$ case) or our relatively poor understanding (for the $NS5-\bar{NS5}$ case) of their worldvolume (gauge theory) dynamics. In the present work, using the well-kn…
We describe type $II_A$ cosmological brane inflation scenarios based on the holographic MQCD model of Aharony et al \cite{Aharony:2010mi}. The scenarios can be related via T-duality to the type $II_B$ KKLMMT model \cite{Kachru:2003sx}. They describe a probe brane configuration of $p$ D4 branes stretching between an $NS5$ and $NS5'$ branes in the holographic background of large $N$ D4 branes. The resulting cosmological models have a Wick-rotated D4-brane metric, with transverse dimensions compactified, and a spiralling brane with flux $p$. In one model, the background has a small nonextremality…
We discuss the lift of certain D6-antiD6-brane systems to M-theory. These are purely gravitational configurations with a bolt singularity. When reduced along a trivial circle, and for large bolt radius, the bolt is related to a non-supersymmetric orbifold type of singularity where some closed string tachyons are expected in the twisted sectors. This is a kind of open-closed string duality that relates open string tachyons on one side and localised tachyons in the other. We consider the evolution of the system of branes from M-theory point of view. This evolution gives rise to a brane-antibrane…
We study metastable nonsupersymmetric configurations in type IIA string theory, obtained by suspending D4-branes and anti-D4-branes between holomorphically curved NS5's, which are related to those of hep-th/0610249 by T-duality. When the numbers of branes and antibranes are the same, we are able to obtain an exact M theory lift which can be used to reliably describe the vacuum configuration as a curved NS5 with dissolved RR flux for g_s<<1 and as a curved M5 for g_s>>1. When our weakly coupled description is reliable, it is related by T-duality to the deformed IIB geometry with flux of hep-th/…
The study of brane-antibrane configurations in string theory leads to the understanding of supersymmetric D$p$-branes as the bound states of higher dimensional branes. Configurations of pairs brane-antibrane do admit in a natural way their description in terms of K-theory. We analyze configurations of brane-antibrane at fixed point orbifold singularities in terms of equivariant K-theory as recently suggested by Witten. Type I and IIB fivebranes and small instantons on ALE singularities are described in K-theoretic terms and their relation to Kronheimer-Nakajima construction of instantons is al…
Previously we have investigated the thermodynamical properties of D-brane--anti-D-brane pairs by calculating the one-loop free energy and the finite temperature effective action in the framework of Matsubara formalism. This calculation is based on boundary string field theory, and we have a problem of a choice of Weyl factors on the two boundaries of one-loop open string world-sheet. We have chosen one of them and compute the one-loop free energy. In this paper, we derive the mass spectrum of open strings on a D-brane--anti-D-brane pair supposing that the world-sheet is a strip, and compute th…
We derive the rules to construct type IIB compact orientifolds in six and four dimensions including D-branes and anti-D-branes. Even though the models are non-supersymmetric due to the presence of the anti-D-branes, we show that it is easy to construct large classes of models free of tachyons. Brane-antibrane annihilation can be prevented for instance by considering models with branes and antibranes stuck at different fixed points in the compact space. We construct several anomaly-free and tachyon-free six-dimensional orientifolds containing D9-branes and anti-D5-branes. This setup allows to c…
By intersecting the RR charged D_p - bar{D}_p pair (p=6, 4, 2, 0) with the RR F7-brane and by intersecting the NSNS charged F1-bar{F1} and NS5-bar{NS5} pairs with the NSNS F6-branes, the possibility of stabilizing the brane-antibrane systems is considered. The behavior of the corresponding supergravity solutions indicates that the RR F7-brane content of the solution plays the role of keeping the brane and the antibrane from annihilating each other completely since the two-brane configuration structure still persists in the vanishing inter-brane distance limit of the supergravity solution. In t…
We calculate the interaction potential between D5 and anti-D5 branes wrapping distant but homologous 2-cycles. The interaction potential is logarithmic in the separation radius and does not decouple at infinity. We show that logarithmic backreaction is generic for 5-branes wrapping distant but homologous 2-cycles, and we argue that this destabilises models of axion monodromy inflation involving NS5 brane-antibrane pairs in separate warped throats towards an uncontrolled region.
I give a brief overview of brane-antibrane inflation, with emphasis on the problems of tuning to get a flat potential in the KKLMMT framework, and recent work on the nature of superpotential corrections in that model.
Intersecting M-branes are known to describe multi charged black holes. Using a configuration of such intersecting branes and antibranes, together with massless excitations living on them, we give a description of Schwarzschild black holes following Danielsson, Guijosa, and Kruczenski. We calculate the entropy of these black holes and find that it agrees, upto a numerical factor, with the entropy of the corresponding Schwarzschild black holes in supergravity approximation. We give an empirical interpretation of this factor.
It is known that hidden U(1) gauge factors can couple to visible U(1)'s through Kinetic Mixing. This phenomenon is shown generically to occur in nonsupersymmetric string set-ups, between branes and antibranes. Kinetic Mixing acts either to give millicharges (of e.g. hypercharge) to would-be hidden sector fermions, or to generate an enhanced communication of supersymmetry breaking that dominates over the usual gravitational suppression. In either case, the conclusion is that the string scale in nonsupersymmetric brane configurations has a generic upper bound of M_s <~ 10^8 GeV.
In order to study the thermodynamic properties of brane-antibrane systems in the toroidal background, we compute the finite temperature effective potential of tachyon T in this system on the basis of boundary string field theory. We first consider the case that all the radii of the target space torus are about the string scale. If the Dp-antiDp pair is extended in all the non-compact directions, the sign of the coefficient of |T|^2 term of the potential changes slightly below the Hagedorn temperature. This means that a phase transition occurs near the Hagedorn temperature. On the other hand, i…
We investigate the thermodynamic properties of D-brane-anti-D-brane pairs and non-BPS D-branes on the basis of boundary string field theory. We calculate the finite temperature effective potential of N D-brane-anti-D-brane pairs in a non-compact background and in a toroidal background. In the non-compact background case, a phase transition occurs slightly below the Hagedorn temperature, and the D9-anti-D9 pairs become stable. Moreover, the total energy at the critical temperature is a decreasing function of N as long as the 't Hooft coupling is very small. This leads to the conclusion that a l…
