McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Informal Pizza Seminar

Tachyon Defect Formation and Reheating in Brane-Antibrane Inflation

Neil Barnaby

McGill

When p-dimensional branes annihilate with antibranes in the early universe, as in brane-antibrane inflation, stable (p-2)-dimensional branes can appear in the final state. I will discuss the possibility that our universe could be one of these (p-2)-branes. In the low energy effective theory, the final state branes are cosmic string defects of the complex tachyon field which describes the instability of the initial state. The dynamics of the formation of these vortices will be discussed. Finally, I will show that the coupling of the time-dependent tachyon background to massless gauge bosons on the final brane can provide an efficient mechanism for reheating after inflation.

Tuesday, March 23rd 2004, 13:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 326