Energy Flow from Open to Closed Strings in a Toy Model of Rolling Tachyon

Abstract

We study the toy model of interacting open and closed string tachyons which demonstrates some interesting properties of the unstable D-brane decay scenario. We compute a stress tensor of the system and study the energy and pressure dynamics. We show that the total energy of the system is conserved. We separate the stress tensor into two parts corresponding to open and closed strings and study the energy flow from open to closed strings. The two vacua of the system could be interpreted as corresponding to the unstable D-brane background and the open string tachyon vacuum. We study how for spatially homogenous solution interpolating between these two vacua the total energy of the open string dissipates to the closed string.