Closed String Tachyon Driving $f(R)$ Cosmology

Abstract

To study quantum effects on the bulk tachyon dynamics, we replace $R$ with $f(R)$ in the low-energy effective action that couples gravity, the dilaton, and the bulk closed string tachyon of bosonic closed string theory and study properties of their classical solutions. The $\alpha^{\prime}$ corrections of the graviton-dilaton-tachyon system are implemented in the $f(R)$. We obtain the tachyon-induced rolling solutions and show that the string metric does not need to remain fixed in some cases. The singular behavior of more classical solutions are investigated and found to be modified by quantum effects. In particular, there could exist some classical solutions, in which the tachyon field rolls down from a maximum of the tachyon potential while the dilaton expectation value is always bounded from above during the rolling process.