Brane-Antibrane Systems at Finite Temperature and Phase Transition near the Hagedorn Temperature

Abstract

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 a phase transition does not occur. This leads us to the conclusion that only a D9-antiD9 pair and no other (lower dimensional) brane-antibrane pairs are created near the Hagedorn temperature. We also discuss a phase transition in NS9B-antiNS9B case as a model of the Hagedorn transition of closed strings.