Fate of unoriented bosonic string after tachyon condensation

Abstract

By a toroidal compactification with a vortex like configuration of tachyon fields, the unoriented bosonic string in 26 dimensions becomes equivalent to 10 dimensional string theory with gauge group $SO(32)\times G$ where $G$ has rank 16. The reduction from SO(8192) to SO(32) is induced by the action of non-abelian Wilson lines which twists the tachyon. The additional enhanced gauge symmetry $G$ appears from closed string sector by Frenkel-Kac construction. We also examine the consistency of the tachyon condensation.