D-Brane Probe and Closed String Tachyons

We consider a D-brane probe in unstable string background associated with flux branes. The twist in spacetime metric reponsible for the supersymmetry breaking is shown to manifest itself in mixing of open Wilson lines with the phases of some adjoint matter fields, resulting in a nonlocal and nonsupersymmetric form of Yang-Mills theory as the probe dynamics. This provides a setup where one can study fate of a large class of unstable closed string theories that include as a limit type 0 theories and various orbifolds of type II and type 0 theories. We discuss the limit of ${\bf C}/Z_n$ orbifold in some detail and speculate on couplings with closed string tachyons.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, typos fixed, references update

The Revival of the Unified Dark Energy-Dark Matter Model ?

We consider the generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) proposal for unification of dark energy and dark matter and show that it admits an unique decomposition into dark energy and dark matter components once phantom-like dark energy is excluded. Within this framework, we study structure formation and show that difficulties associated to unphysical oscillations or blow-up in the matter power spectrum can be circumvented. Furthermore, we show that the dominance of dark energy is related to the time when energy density fluctuations start deviating from the linear $\delta \sim a$ behaviour.Comment: 6 pages, 4 eps figures, Revtex4 style. New References are added. Some typos are corrected. Conclusions remain the sam

Cylindrically symmetric, static strings with a cosmological constant in Brans-Dicke theory

The static, cylindrically symmetric vacuum solutions with a cosmological constant in the framework of the Brans-Dicke theory are investigated. Some of these solutions admitting Lorentz boost invariance along the symmetry axis correspond to local, straight cosmic strings with a cosmological constant. Some physical properties of such solutions are studied. These strings apply attractive or repulsive forces on the test particles. A smooth matching is also performed with a recently introduced interior thick string solution with a cosmological constant.Comment: 8 pages, Revtex; Published versio

Proper acceleration, geometric tachyon and dynamics of a fundamental string near Dpp branes

We present a detailed analysis of our recent observation that the origin of the geometric tachyon, which arises when a D$p$-brane propagates in the vicinity of a stack of coincident NS5-branes, is due to the proper acceleration generated by the background dilaton field. We show that when a fundamental string (F-string), described by the Nambu-Goto action, is moving in the background of a stack of coincident D$p$-branes, the geometric tachyon mode can also appear since the overall conformal mode of the induced metric for the string can act as a source for proper acceleration. We also studied the detailed dynamics of the F-string as well as the instability by mapping the Nambu-Goto action of the F-string to the tachyon effective action of the non-BPS D-string. We qualitatively argue that the condensation of the geometric tachyon is responsible for the (F,D$p$) bound state formation.Comment: 26 pages, v2: added references, v3: one ref. updated, to appear in Class. and Quant. Gravit

General 2 charge geometries

Two charge BPS horizon free supergravity geometries are important in proposals for understanding black hole microstates. In this paper we construct a new class of geometries in the NS1-P system, corresponding to solitonic strings carrying fermionic as well as bosonic condensates. Such geometries are required to account for the full microscopic entropy of the NS1-P system. We then briefly discuss the properties of the corresponding geometries in the dual D1-D5 system.Comment: 44 page

Generalized Chaplygin Gas in a modified gravity approach

We study the generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) scenario in a modified gravity approach. That is, we impose that our universe has a pure dust configuration, and allow for a modification of gravity that yields a GCG specific scale factor evolution. Moreover, assuming that this new hypothetical gravity theory obeys a generalization of Birkhoff's law, we determine the Schwarzschild-like metric in this new modified gravity. We also study the large scale structure formation in this model. Both the linear and non-linear growth are studied together with the growth of the velocity fluctuation in the linear perturbation theory. We compare our results with those corresponding to the $\Lambda$CDM model and discuss possible distinguishable features.Comment: 13 pages and 4 figures. Final version to appear in PR

Dirichlet Branes on Orientifolds

We consider the classification of BPS and non-BPS D-branes in orientifold models. In particular we construct all stable BPS and non-BPS D-branes in the Gimon-Polchinski (GP) and Dabholkar-Park-Blum-Zaffaroni (DPBZ) orientifolds and determine their stability regions in moduli space as well as decay products. We find several kinds of integrally and torsion charged non-BPS D-branes. Certain of these are found to have projective representations of the orientifold $\times$ GSO group on the Chan-Paton factors. It is found that the GP orientifold is not described by equivariant orthogonal K-theory as may have been at first expected. Instead a twisted version of this K-theory is expected to be relevant.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX, 5 figures. v2 typos corrected, references included, (4,s)-branes re-examine

Cosmological Rescaling through Warped Space

We discuss a scenario where at least part of the homogeneity on a brane world can be directly related to the hierarchy problem through warped space. We study the dynamics of an anti-D3-brane moving toward the infrared cut-off of a warped background. After a region described by the DBI action, the self-energy of the anti-D3-brane will dominate over the background. Then the world-volume scale of the anti-D3-brane is no longer comoving with the background geometry. After it settles down in the infrared end, the world-volume inhomogeneity will appear, to a Poincare observer, to be stretched by an exponentially large ratio. This ratio is close to that of the hierarchy problem between the gravitational and electroweak scales.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures; v2, PRD version, comments and references adde

The Tachyon Potential in the Sliver Frame

We evaluate the tachyon potential in the Schnabl gauge through off-shell computations in the sliver frame. As an application of the results of our computations, we provide a strong evidence that Schnabl's analytic solution for tachyon condensation in open string field theory represents a saddle point configuration of the full tachyon potential. Additionally we verify that Schnabl's analytic solution lies on the minimum of the effective tachyon potential.Comment: v1: 19 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; v2: 20 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, 1 reference added, comments added; v3: 21 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, 4 references added, comments adde

Excitons in Electrostatic Traps

We consider in-plane electrostatic traps for indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells, where the traps are formed by a laterally modulated gate voltage. An intrinsic obstacle for exciton confinement in electrostatic traps is an in-plane electric field that can lead to exciton dissociation. We propose a design to suppress the in-plane electric field and, at the same time, to effectively confine excitons in the electrostatic traps. We present calculations for various classes of electrostatic traps and experimental proof of principle for trapping of indirect excitons in electrostatic traps.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure