On the time-dependent description for the decay of unstable D-branes

Abstract

We discuss how to describe time-dependent phenomena in string theory like the decay of unstable D-branes with the help of the world-sheet formulation. It is shown in a nontrivial well-controlled example that the coupling of the tachyons to propagating on-shell modes which escape to infinity can lead to time-dependent relaxation into a stationary final state. The final state corresponds to a fixed point of the RG flow generated by the relevant field from which the tachyon vertex operator is constructed. On the way we set up a fairly general formalism for the description of slow time-dependent phenomena with the help of conformal perturbation theory on the world-sheet.