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# Constraints on distances to Galactic Centre non-thermal filaments from HI absorption

## 1 Introduction

The long narrow non-thermal filaments (NTFs) observed in high resolution radio-continuum maps are unique features seen towards only the central $``$ 2 region of our Galaxy. These structures are less than 1 pc in width, but extend up to 30 pc in length. With the exception of the NTF named as the Pelican (Lang et al. 1999), which is nearly parallel to the galactic plane, all other NTFs are oriented perpendicular to the Galactic plane to within 20 (Morris & Serabyn (1996) and the references therein). Except the NTF G359.79+0.17, which has a curved morphology reminiscent of a partial shell, all other NTFs portray a linear structure. The spectral indices of these structures range from $``$0.8 to +0.3 (where S$`{}_{\nu }{}^{}\nu ^\alpha `$) (Anantharamaiah et al. 1991) and they are found to be highly polarised at centimetre wavelengths (Morris & Serabyn 1996). Since these NTFs remain straight despite interaction with nearby molecular clouds, it is believed that the molecular clouds and the NTFs are in pressure equilibrium, which indicates a magnetic field strength of a few milliGauss inside the NTFs (Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987). Magnetic fields of comparable strengths are thought to be present in the central molecular zone (CMZ) located within $``$ 200 pc from the centre of the Galaxy (Morris & Serabyn 1996). Before any attempt is made to relate the magnetic field in the NTFs with the processes occurring in the GC, it is necessary to establish that these NTFs are actually located in the GC region and are not chance superpositions of foreground or background objects (Lasenby et al. 1989). HI absorption towards the GC ‘Radio-arc’ (Lasenby et al. 1989) and the ‘Snake’ (Uchida et al. 1992) have indicated that they are located close to the GC, but the distances to the remaining NTFs are not constrained.

An intriguing fact that has been noticed for all the well studied NTFs is the interaction of the NTF with molecular clouds (Morris & Serabyn 1996). It appears that the presence of an HII region near the place of interaction plays a role in the creation and maintenance of the NTFs (Serabyn & Morris 1994; Staguhn et al. 1998; Uchida & Guesten 1995). CO observations have indicated the presence of high velocity molecular clouds; $``$65 km s-1 and $``$130 km s-1 towards Sgr C (Liszt & Spiker 1995). It is believed that the HII region located just south of the NTF (known as the Sgr C HII region) is actually embedded in the $``$65 km s-1 cloud (Liszt & Spiker 1995; Kramer et al. 1998). Two dense molecular clouds are reported to be associated with the NTF G359.54+0.18. One of the cloud having a velocity of $``$140 km s-1, is located near the bent portion of the NTF (‘E’ in Fig. 8). The other cloud with a velocity of $``$90 km s-1 is located close to the eastern edge of the NTF (Staguhn et al. 1998). However, these reported associations are based on their proximity in the sky plane, and the spatial association of the corresponding objects are yet to be established.

In this paper, we present new HI absorption measurements towards three NTFs, Sgr C, G359.54+0.18 and G359.79+0.17 made with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). These observations not only constrain the distances of these objects, but also test the association of some of the above mentioned clouds with the corresponding NTFs. These three NTFs are located to the south and south west of the Sgr A complex, and high resolution radio continuum observations have confirmed the characteristic properties of each of the NTFs: Sgr C (Liszt & Spiker 1995), G359.54+0.18 (Bally & Yusef-Zadeh 1989; Yusef-Zadeh et al. 1997) and G359.79+0.17 (Lang & Anantharamaiah, in preparation).

Due to velocity crowding near galactic longitude l=0, galactic rotation cannot be used to constrain the distances to these NTFs. Therefore, in this paper, detection of absorption by known HI features has been used to provide constraints on the distances to the NTFs. Since an interferometer resolves the extended HI emission features, no information about the emission features are obtained from our observations. However, absorption by these features against the continuum source can be observed with an interferometer. Therefore, in this section, we briefly summarise the distances and the velocities of the HI features identified from single dish HI emission observations towards the NTFs under study (e.g. Cohen & Davies (1979)), which we will refer to later in the paper. Near the Galactic longitude of 359.5, two high velocity HI emission features known as the ‘Nuclear disk’ (Rougoor & Oort 1960) and the ‘Molecular ring’ (Scoville 1972) have been found. ‘Nuclear disk’ shows high negative velocity ranging from $``$ $``$160 to $``$200 km s-1, whereas, the ‘Molecular ring’ has a velocity of $``$ $``$135 km s-1. Both these features are believed to be nearer than the GC and located at a distance of few hundred parsecs from it (Cohen & Davies 1979). The emission from the ‘3 kpc arm’ (Rougoor 1964) located at a distance of $``$ 5.1 kpc from the Sun is identified at a velocity near $``$53 km s-1. At positive velocities, emission near 135 km s-1 is seen due to the HI features ‘XVI’ and ‘I’ (Cohen & Davies 1979), both of which are thought to be located behind the GC. While the feature ‘XVI’ is likely to be located within a few hundred parsecs from the GC (Cohen & Davies 1979), the feature ‘I’ is thought to be 2 kpc behind the GC (Cohen 1975).

In $`\mathrm{\S }`$2 of this paper, we discuss the observations and data reduction. The results from our observations are presented in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3 and their consequences have been discussed in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4. Finally, the conclusions are presented in $`\mathrm{\S }`$5.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

The GMRT (Swarup et al. 1991) consists of thirty antennas, distributed over a region of about 25 km, with fourteen of the antennas located within a diameter of about one km and the remaining arranged in 3 arms each of length 14 km, shaped as an irregular Y. This arrangement provides the necessary uv coverage for mapping both compact and extended sources. The ratio of the longest to the shortest baseline is $``$ 500 with the shortest projected baseline being $``$ 50 metres. Table 1 give the details of our observations. All the observations were carried out in the default spectral line mode with 128 frequency channels. A bandwidth of 4 MHz was used to observe G359.54+0.18 and G359.79+0.17 which gave a velocity coverage of $`\pm `$400 km s-1 with a resolution of 6.7 km s-1. The Sgr C complex was observed with a bandwidth of 2 MHz ($`\pm `$ 200 km s-1) and 4 MHz ($`\pm `$ 400 km s-1). In all the observations, 3C286 was observed as a primary flux calibrator, 3C287 as the bandpass calibrator and 1748-253 as the secondary calibrator. The bandpass pattern of the antennas change appreciably as a function of frequency. Therefore, we have not used frequency switching for the bandpass calibration. Instead, we have chosen a bandpass calibrator (3C287) with a high Galactic latitude, so that the effect of Galactic HI absorption on its spectra is less than 1% (Dickey et al. 1978). During our observations, the automatic measurements of system temperatures were not implemented. However, since in this paper we are not concerned with the absolute value of the flux density, we have applied an approximate correction by scaling the flux of all the fields by the ratio of the estimated flux density (157 mJy) of the small-diameter source G359.87+0.18 (Lazio et al. 1999) at 1.55 GHz to the flux density that we have estimated from our map (ratio $``$ 2.5). All the maps presented in this paper have been corrected for the primary beam pattern of the antennas.

The spectral visibility data were processed using standard NRAO AIPS programs. Bad data due to antenna-based or baseline-based problems were flagged using UVFLG. The data were then calibrated and images of the fields were formed by Fourier inversion and CLEANing (IMAGR). To reduce the effect of comparatively large scale structures in HI along the line of sight, we have done a high pass filtering while making the maps of the three NTFs. Since the NTFs are oriented almost along the east-west direction (i.e. along u), we have filtered out data having v $``$ 2000$`\lambda `$ and u $``$ 4000 $`\lambda `$, because of which any 2-D structure which has a size-scale $``$ 1.5 will not be visible and linear structures of length $``$ 10 can only be imaged. We have used the AIPS task UVNOU to implement this data filtering in u & v. The visibility data were then used to generate the continuum and line images. The continuum map of Sgr C NTF made using the above procedure is shown in Fig. 1. Since the Sgr C HII region is extended, we have applied a lower uv cutoff of 1 k$`\lambda `$ to the visibility data before making the line and the continuum maps (Fig. 2). During observation of G359.79+0.17, the GC was located just outside the half power width of the GMRT primary beam. Hence, to minimise the sidelobe response of the GC in the image of the NTF G359.79+0.17, 3-D imaging (available in the recent versions of IMAGR) was used.

Before making the channel maps, the AIPS task UVLSF was used to subtract a constant term across the frequency channels corresponding to the continuum from the visibility data. The GMRT has an FX correlator, for which ‘Gibbs ringing’ due to any sharp feature in the spectrum dies away much faster ($``$ sinc2) than in a XF correlator. Therefore, we have not applied any spectral smoothing to our data. The variation in the line frequency introduced by the earth’s rotation during the observing period is estimated to be much smaller than the frequency channel width and so we have not applied any Doppler corrections to the data. It should be noted here that the RMS noise quoted for each spectrum is the noise estimated from the corresponding images (i.e., from image plane) and are applicable for only $`|`$velocity$`|`$ 20 km s-1. For $`|`$velocity$`|`$ 20 km s-1, due to emission from the HI gas along the line of sight (velocity crowding occurs when $`|l|`$ $``$ 0), the system temperature increases and the typical RMS noise is 1.6 times higher than the quoted values. The systematic error in our spectra (e, where $`\tau `$ is the optical depth) is believed to be less than 0.05.

## 3 Results

In this section, we present the absorption spectra towards the target sources and identify the velocity of the HI absorption features. In all the spectra, unless otherwise stated, the X-axis represents the velocity in km s-1 and Y-axis represents the transmission (I/I0), where, I is the observed flux density of the background source at the given frequency and I0 is the actual flux density of the source. We also assume the spin temperature of the atomic hydrogen to be much less than the brightness temperature of the background source and in that case I/I0=e. All the velocities quoted in this paper are expressed with respect to the Local Standard of Rest and the GC is assumed to be at a distance of 8.5 kpc. As is well known, the HI column density is related to its optical depth by the formula, $`N_H`$=1.8 $`\times 10^{18}\times T_S\times \tau 𝑑v`$, where, $`N_H`$ is the column density of the atomic hydrogen, $`T_S`$ is the spin temperature and $`\tau 𝑑v`$ is the velocity integrated optical depth. We use this relation to calculate the HI column density from the observed optical depth.

### 3.1 Sgr C

The absorption spectra towards various parts of the object (Fig. 1 & 2) are shown in Fig. 3 and 4. Fig. 3 shows the absorption spectrum towards part ‘A’ and ‘B’ (see Fig. 1) of the NTF. The spectrum towards part ‘A’ shows several absorption features at negative velocities in addition to the absorption feature at 0 km s-1 (line-width $``$ 30 km s-1). A strong absorption feature near $``$54 km s-1 is seen due to HI absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’. A broad absorption feature is seen between $``$100 km s-1 and $``$200 km s-1, with an almost linear decrease in optical depth from $``$ 0.5, at $``$100 km s-1, to $``$ 0.0, at $``$200 km s-1.

The spectrum taken towards part ‘B’ of the NTF (Fig. 3), appears markedly different. The absorption width of the 0 km s-1 feature appears to be narrower ($``$ 25 km s-1) than that observed towards ‘A’. Absorption due to the ‘3 kpc arm’ is also seen. However, except for a weak 4$`\sigma `$ absorption feature at $``$137 km s-1, the wide absorption feature between $``$100 and $``$200 km s-1 is not seen.

The absorption spectrum towards the Sgr C HII region with a resolution of 3.3 km s-1 is shown in Fig. 4. For comparison, the spectrum of part ‘A’ having the same velocity resolution is also plotted. Both the spectra show similar absorption features with a few differences, which we note here. Towards the HII region, the broad absorption feature seen between $``$100 and $``$200 km s-1 shows at least three main components centred at $``$118 km s-1, $``$138 km s-1 and $``$175 km s-1 with optical depth of $``$0.5, 0.3 and 0.2 respectively. The absorption depth at these velocities are similar to what is seen towards part ‘A’ of the NTF. However, the absorption feature near 0 km s-1 is broader towards the HII region (line-width $``$ 33 km s-1). The HII region shows a feature at $``$61.5 km s-1, in addition to the absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’ observed near $``$54 km s-1 in both the spectra. However, Part ‘B’ of the NTF being weaker than part ‘A’ in radio continuum, absence of the $``$61.5 km s-1 feature could not be verified against ‘B’.

### 3.2 HI absorption spectra towards objects located in the field of Sgr C: source C, D and FIR-4

Fig. 5 shows the spectra towards source ‘C’ (‘3’ in Liszt & Spiker (1995)), source ‘D’ and FIR-4 (Fig. 2). The spectrum towards the source ‘C’ is similar to what is seen towards the Sgr C HII region, but, in place of the wide absorption feature between $``$100 and $``$200 km s-1 (Fig. 4), two absorption lines are observed at $``$123 km s-1 and $``$170 km s-1. Since the continuum emission from the HII region FIR-4 is weak, its absorption spectrum is noisy. However, we identify HI absorption at $``$135 km s-1 (5 $`\sigma `$ detection) and at $``$183 km s-1 (4 $`\sigma `$ detection) towards FIR-4. CO emission has been observed towards the source ‘C’ and FIR-4 at $``$123 km s-1 and $``$135 km s-1 respectively (Oka et al. 1998). On the other hand, the spectrum towards the southern HII region ‘D’ (Fig. 2), (‘1’ in Liszt & Spiker (1995)) located just outside the half power width of the GMRT antennas is markedly different. Except the strong absorption near the 0 km s-1 (line-width $``$ 30 km s-1), no other absorption feature could be identified towards this object.

### 3.3 NTF G359.79+0.17 and G359.87+0.18

The continuum image at 20 cm of the field of NTF G359.79+0.17 is shown in Fig. 6. The absorption spectrum integrated over the NTF is plotted in Fig. 7. The strong absorption near the 0 km s-1 has a line-width of $``$ 24 km s-1. No absorption feature at positive velocities is seen towards this source. However, at negative velocities, an absorption feature can be seen at $``$26 km s-1, and a weaker feature at $``$58 km s-1, which coincides with the line of sight velocity of the ‘3 kpc arm’.

Fig. 7 also shows the absorption spectrum towards the extragalactic source G359.87+0.18. Strong absorption near 0 km s-1 with a line-width of $``$ 40 km s-1, and absorption at $``$53 km s-1 are observed. Lazio et al. (1999) have observed HI absorption against G359.87+0.18, and the aforementioned features match with their spectrum. However, the present observations have a wider velocity coverage than Lazio et al. (1999) and we detect an additional absorption feature at +140 km s-1.

### 3.4 NTF G359.54+0.18

The continuum image of the NTF G359.54+0.18 is shown in Fig. 8 and the absorption spectrum integrated over the NTF is plotted in Fig. 9. The absorption spectrum is quite similar to the one seen towards G359.79+0.17, with components at $``$26 km s-1 and $``$53 km s-1. The strong HI absorption near 0 km s-1 has a line-width of $``$ 24 km s-1. Staguhn et al. (1998) have found a dense molecular cloud at $``$140 km s-1 near the bent portion of the NTF (position of the molecular cloud is denoted by ‘E’ in Fig. 8). HI spectrum taken towards this region of the NTF (denoted by ‘F’ in Fig. 8) shows absorption (Fig. 9) at this velocity (4$`\sigma `$ detection). Staguhn et al. (1998) also detected another molecular cloud near $``$90 km s-1 near the eastern edge of the NTF (not seen in Fig. 8). Since the eastern edge of the NTF G359.54+0.18 is faint in radio-continuum, no useful HI absorption spectrum could be obtained.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Identification of HI features & constraints on the distances to the NTFs

Identifications of HI absorption feature is performed by comparison with features of known velocities. Absorption indicates that the continuum source is located on the far side of the HI cloud and thereby provides a constraint on the distance to the continuum source. The velocities and the distances of the known HI emission features towards the three NTFs studied here have been discussed in $`\mathrm{\S }`$1 and summarised in Table 2, which will be used to constrain the distances to the NTFs.

#### 4.1.1 Sgr C

Due to absorption by the line of sight HI gas and velocity crowding near l=0, strong absorption is observed near 0 km s-1 in all spectra towards the Sgr C NTF and the HII region discussed in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3.1. Absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’ is observed at $``$54 km s-1 towards the Sgr C NTF and the HII region (Fig. 3 and 4). However, the broad absorption feature (Fig. 3) identified towards the central part of the Sgr C NTF (marked ‘A’ in Fig. 1) between $``$100 and $``$200 km s-1 is peculiar. Three distinct absorption features are detected in the same velocity range in the higher resolution spectrum of the HII region in Fig. 4. This suggests absorption by clouds whose velocities differ by an amount less than the individual line-width.

Absorption near $``$138 km s-1 is likely to be caused by the HI associated with the ‘Molecular ring’, which has a line-width of $``$ 40 km s-1 in emission (Cohen & Davies 1979). Detection of absorption beyond $``$160 km s-1 indicates absorption by the ‘Nuclear disk’ (Rougoor & Oort 1960). However, we were unable to identify the $``$100 km s-1 absorption with any known HI emission feature. We believe that this feature was missed due to beam dilution in the low resolution (single dish) HI surveys. We examined the existing CO (Oka et al. 1998) and CS (Tsuboi et al. 1999) emission line maps of this region (spatial resolution $`1^{}`$) made using the 45 m telescope of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory. Since these spectra have a much higher angular resolution than the single dish HI surveys, we attempted an identification of the $``$100 km s-1 feature with a CO or CS feature. The CO spectra towards part ‘A’ and ‘B’ of the NTF and the HII region is shown in Fig. 10. Strong CO emission is indeed observed near $``$100 km s-1 (line-width $``$ 20 km s-1). The antenna temperature from part ‘A’ of the NTF is a factor of 2 higher than part ‘B’. The CS spectrum also shows a similar ratio. (CS emission traces dense molecular clouds with density $`10^4`$ cm-3, which are typically found in the CMZ). Fig. 11 shows a contour image of this cloud in CS emission (data courtesy Tsuboi et al. (1999)) within a velocity range of $``$110 and $``$90 km s-1. Note that the molecular cloud covers almost the whole NTF, although the $``$100 km s-1 absorption is only observed towards part ‘A’.

The $``$100 km s-1 molecular cloud has been catalogued by Oka et al. (2001) and by Miyazaki & Tsuboi (2000) (cloud 17 at l=359.48, b=$``$0.042). Using the estimated parameters of the cloud (radius $``$ 5 pc, mass 7.2$`\times 10^4M_{}`$), the mean density of this cloud is 3100 H2 cm-3. Assuming the ratio of atomic to molecular hydrogen is 0.01 (Liszt et al. 1983; Lasenby et al. 1989), the HI column density is 9.3$`\times `$1020 cm-2. We find that an assumed spin temperature of 100 K, and a line width of 20 km s-1 explains the observed HI optical depth of $``$ 0.5. Hence, we believe that we are observing absorption by HI associated with the $``$100 km s-1 molecular cloud.

Our high resolution spectrum of the Sgr C HII region clearly shows the presence of two spectral features in the range of $``$50 to $``$65 km s-1(Fig. 4). Liszt & Spiker (1995) have identified a molecular cloud towards Sgr C with a velocity of $``$ $``$65 km s-1, which they call M359.5$``$0.15. The $``$54 km s-1 feature is identified with the 3 kpc arm, whereas the $``$61.5 km s-1 feature in our HI data is believed to arise from M359.5$``$0.15. The presence of absorption by the molecular cloud M359.5$``$0.15 indicates that the Sgr C HII region is either embedded in or located at the far side of the cloud. This result supports the suggestion of Liszt & Spiker (1995) that Sgr C HII region (Fig. 2) is located in a cavity of M359.5$``$0.15. We note that CO emission near $``$65 km s-1 has been detected towards both part ‘A’ of the NTF and the HII region (Fig. 10). The lack of HI absorption towards part ‘A’ of the NTF indicates that it is located in the front of the $``$65 km s-1 cloud. Therefore, we believe that the Sgr C HII region is relatively farther away than the Sgr C NTF, which provides evidence against any interaction between the two (see the schematic in Fig. 13).

Having identified the absorption features in the HI spectrum, here we estimate the distance of the Sgr C complex. Since absorption by the ‘Molecular ring’ and the ‘Nuclear disk’ have been detected towards the Sgr C NTF (part ‘A’ in Fig. 1) and the HII region, we can conclude that these objects seen in radio continuum are located at a minimum distance of these HI features. As ‘Molecular ring’ and the ‘Nuclear disk’ are located within $``$ 200 pc from the GC, this provides a lower limit of $``$8.3 kpc to these objects. We note that despite the emission feature seen in the CO map at $``$140 km s-1 (Fig. 10), no corresponding HI absorption could be detected towards the Sgr C region. The CO emission from the molecular cloud at $``$140 km s-1 is likely to be associated with the HI features ‘XVI’ and ‘I’ and both these features are located at the far side of the GC. Absence of any absorption by the HI associated with these structures indicate that the Sgr C NTF and the HII region are located within a few hundred parsecs at the far side of the GC, which provides an upper limit to their distances.

There appears to be weak absorption (4 $`\sigma `$ detection) towards part ‘B’ of the NTF at $``$137 km s-1 which appears to have been caused by the ‘Molecular ring’. Since we expect a much stronger absorption if this part of the NTF is located at the far side of the ‘Molecular ring’, we suggest that the part ‘B’ of the NTF is embedded in the ‘Molecular ring’. Also, since the ‘Nuclear disk’ is expected to be located farther away from the GC than the ‘Molecular ring’; lack of absorption by this feature may indicate that there is a hole in the ‘Nuclear disk’ towards part ‘B’ of the NTF.

#### 4.1.2 Objects located in the field of Sgr C: source C, D and FIR-4

The HI spectrum ($`\mathrm{\S }`$3.2) towards source ‘C’ (Fig. 1) shows absorption at $``$53 km s-1, $``$123 km s-1 and $``$170 km s-1 (Fig. 5), which indicates HI absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’, ‘Molecular ring’ (‘Molecular ring’ is expected to have a velocity of $``$ $``$135 km s-1, which differs in this case by less than the line-width) and the ‘Nuclear disk’ respectively. HI spectrum of FIR-4 also indicates absorption by the ‘Molecular ring’ at $``$135 km s-1 and the ‘Nuclear disk’ at $``$ $``$183 km s-1 (Fig. 5). Since the ‘Molecular ring’ and the ‘Nuclear disk’ are thought to be located within a few hundred parsecs from the GC, HI absorption by these two features provides a lower limit of $``$ 8.5 kpc to the distances of the source ‘C’ and FIR-4. On the other hand, the spectrum taken towards the southern HII region ‘D’ (Fig. 2), shows no absorption near $``$53 km s-1 (Fig. 5). Liszt & Spiker (1995) have suggested that source ‘D’ is a local object due to the absence of non-zero velocity features in the HI spectrum. The absence of any non-zero velocity features in our spectrum also makes us to draw a similar conclusion.

#### 4.1.3 NTF G359.79+0.17 & G359.87+0.18

HI absorption near +140 km s-1 is observed (Fig. 7) towards the extragalactic source G359.87+0.18. The HI emission feature ‘I’ seen in HI (Cohen & Davies 1979) is located $``$ 2 kpc behind the GC and has a line of sight velocity of +135 km s-1 at this longitude. The HI feature ‘XVI’ located a few hundred parsecs behind the GC also has a similar velocity at this longitude. The absorption seen in Fig. 7 near +140 km s-1 matches closely with the velocity of these two features, which indicates that the absorption is caused by either one or a combination of both these features.

No HI absorption at high positive velocity is detected towards the NTF G359.79+0.17. However, CO emission has been detected near +140 km s-1 towards both G359.79+0.17 and the extragalactic source G359.87+0.18 (Fig. 12), which indicates that there is no hole in feature ‘I’ (or perhaps in feature ‘XVI’) along these directions. Consequently, the upper limit to the distance of the NTF is $``$ 10.5 kpc. The presence of absorption in the spectrum of the NTF up to a negative velocity of $``$58 km s-1 suggests absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’ and consequently, the lower limit to its distance is $``$ 5.1 kpc from the Sun.

Lazio et al. (1999) suggested the presence of a $``$20 km s-1 cloud at the far side of the GC. The presence of a narrow absorption feature $``$26 km s-1 in our data towards the NTF G359.79+0.17 may indicate that it is embedded in this negative velocity cloud. This cloud could have caused the somewhat wider absorption profile in the spectrum towards the extragalactic source G359.87+0.18 which is observed through a substantially longer line of sight path through this HI gas.

#### 4.1.4 NTF G359.54+0.18

The spectrum of G359.54+0.18 (Fig. 9) is quite similar to that towards the NTF G359.79+0.17. The presence of absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’ near a velocity of $``$53 km s-1 clearly indicates that G359.54+0.18 is located beyond 5.1 kpc from the Sun. As G359.79+0.17 and G359.87+0.18, CO emission has also been detected towards this NTF at 140 km s-1 (Fig. 12), but, absence of HI absorption at this high positive velocity indicates that it is located within $``$ 10.5 kpc from the Sun. As described in section $`\mathrm{\S }`$4.1.3, this NTF also seems to be embedded in the $``$20 km s-1 cloud. We could detect weak HI absorption at 4$`\sigma `$ level at $``$140 km s-1 (Fig. 9) toward part-F of the NTF shown in Fig. 8. A dense molecular cloud having the same velocity is also found to be present near this location (Staguhn et al. 1998). Since dense molecular cloud are typically found only in the CMZ, our observations suggest that the NTF G359.54+0.18 is also embedded in or located at the far side of the CMZ.

### 4.2 HI column densities

We have estimated column densities for the HI feature ‘I’ (+155 to +125 km s-1), the local foreground HI component (+35 to $``$35 km s-1), the ‘3 kpc arm’ ($``$77 to $``$40 km s-1), and the combined molecular cloud and ‘Nuclear Disk’ ($``$90 to $``$200 km s-1) components towards the NTFs Sgr C, G359.79+0.17 and G359.54+0.18 and the extragalactic source G359.87+0.18. These column densities, expressed as a multiple of the spin temperature ‘Ts’, are presented in Table 3. The velocity limits for the various HI features were determined by visual inspection of the absorption spectra towards these sources. Since we could not separate the absorption by the molecular cloud and the ‘Nuclear disk’, we have quoted their total column densities. Due to the velocity crowding towards the GC, the optical depth of the local line of sight HI gas is large (i.e., $`\mathrm{exp}(\tau )`$ 0). Therefore, any small error in estimating the optical depth would result in comparatively larger error in the estimated column densities. Hence, the estimated total column densities of the foreground HI gas should be taken with caution. The column density of the line of sight HI gas ($``$35 km s-1 $`<`$ velocity $`<`$ 35 km s-1) shown in Table 3, falls by a factor of 2 towards the NTFs G359.79+0.17 and G359.54+0.18 for $`|`$b$`|`$ $``$ 0.2, which suggests that the scale height of the HI gas at the distance of the GC is $``$ 27 pc.

The HI column density estimated from the optical depth towards the ‘Snake’ (G359.1$``$0.2) NTF (Uchida et al. 1992) is 1.1 Ts $`\times `$ 1020 due to the local foreground HI component, 2.3 Ts $`\times `$ 1019 due to the ‘3 kpc arm’, and 2.8 Ts $`\times `$ 1019 due to the ‘Molecular ring’. These numbers are comparable (within a factor of two) with our estimated column density towards G359.54+0.18 and G359.79+0.17 given in Table 3. We note that the column density as quoted in Table 1 of Uchida et al. (1992) towards all of their sources are incorrect and 100 times higher than what is found from their quoted optical depth.

### 4.3 Interaction of the molecular cloud with the Sgr C NTF

As shown in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3.1, no HI absorption by the $``$100 km s-1 cloud could be identified towards part ‘B’ of the Sgr C NTF (Fig. 3). However, HI absorption by the $``$100 km s-1 cloud could be identified towards part ‘A’ of the Sgr C NTF. From the ratio of CO brightness, temperature towards part ‘A’ and ‘B’ of the NTF ($`\mathrm{\S }`$4.1.1), we expect HI optical depth of $``$0.2 towards ‘B’ in the velocity range of $``$95 and $``$125 km s-1, which is 5 times higher than the effective noise in the spectrum. Therefore, if the abundance of atomic hydrogen and the spin temperature (Ts) are the same in different parts of the cloud, HI absorption towards part ‘A’ and lack of it towards part ‘B’ of the NTF can only be explained if ‘A’ is located at the far side and ‘B’ is located at the near side of the cloud and the NTF is at least partly embedded within the cloud. In Fig. 13, we show a schematic of the Sgr C complex in the GC region, including the relative location of the absorbing clouds about the Sgr C complex.

Here, we consider three possible scenarios, which could have led the Sgr C NTF to be partly embedded within the $``$100 km s-1 cloud.
(i) We first consider the case of the NTF tunnelling through the already existing $``$100 km s-1 cloud after being created. To penetrate the cloud, the high energy electrons in the NTF have to first ionise the neutral gas. With an estimated width of 35$`^{^{\prime \prime }}`$ (1.4 pc), length 255$`^{^{\prime \prime }}`$ (10 pc) and equipartition magnetic field of 100 $`\mu `$G (Anantharamaiah et al. 1991) in the NTF, the estimated total energy of the relativistic electrons is $``$$`\times `$ 1047 erg. However, the energy required to ionise even a HI cloud (mean density 3100 cm-3) of length equal to that of the size of the cloud (10 pc) and cross-sectional area equal to that of the NTF is $``$3 $`\times `$ 1049 erg. Therefore, the energy of the relativistic electrons is less than 1% of the required energy to penetrate the molecular cloud. Hence, unless a tunnel in the cloud already exists, the electrons will not have sufficient energy to support this scenario.
(ii) Next, we consider the case, where the NTF does not penetrate the cloud, but the synchrotron electrons are generated from the ionised surfaces on either side of the $``$100 km s-1 cloud and follow the local magnetic field lines. In the case of ‘Radio-arc’, which is comprised of several narrow filaments, the individual filaments appear to either end or begin from the HII region G0.18$``$0.04 (sickle like feature), located near the midpoint of the NTF. Based on the observations of the ‘Radio-arc’, Serabyn & Morris (1994) have proposed that association of the NTF, molecular cloud and HII region are necessary to explain the generation of high energy electrons forming the NTFs. In Fig. 2c of Liszt & Spiker (1995), we observe two filamentary structures towards the western side of the part ‘A’ of Sgr C NTF, which merge into a single brighter filament near ‘A’. Our observations indicate that the $``$100 km s-1 cloud is associated with the NTF near ‘A’ (RA (J2000)=17h44m33s, DEC=-2925’55$`^{^{\prime \prime }}`$). In this scenario, if the surface of this cloud is ionised, then association of the molecular cloud and HII region with the NTF satisfies the criterion of Serabyn & Morris (1994) to generate it. Here, if the electrons flowing towards part ‘A’ is at the far side and part ‘B’ lies at the near side of the cloud, then the absence of $``$100 km s-1 HI absorption against part ‘B’ can be explained. However, no such ionised surface of the cloud (as HII region) like G0.18$``$0.04 has been detected near part ‘A’ of the NTF from the Nobeyama millimetre array observation of this region (Tsuboi et al. 1991) at 22 GHz. Thus, the above scenario also fails to explain the observations.
(iii) Finally, we consider an alternative source of the synchrotron electrons in the Sgr C NTF and the case of collision of the $``$100 km s-1 cloud with this already existing NTF. Liszt & Spiker (1995) proposed that the HII region FIR 4 (Odenwald & Fazio 1984) is associated with the Sgr C NTF, which acts as the source of relativistic electrons. Fig. 7 in Liszt & Spiker (1995) shows a molecular cloud around this HII region. We note that FIR-4, with its wedge like morphology, is similar to the HII region G0.18$``$0.04, discussed earlier. The longer side of FIR-4 lies almost perpendicular to the direction of the NTF, thereby suggesting interaction between the NTF and the HII region in a way similar to the Radio-arc. The CS data (Tsuboi et al. 1999) shows a compact dense molecular cloud with a velocity of $``$75 km s-1, which coincides with the position of FIR-4. However, in the absence of any recombination line detection from this HII region, actual association of FIR-4 and the $``$75 km s-1 cloud cannot be verified. In $`\mathrm{\S }`$4.1.2, it is shown that the lower limit to its distance is $``$ 8.5 kpc, which is consistent with its proposed association with the NTF. Therefore, if we assume that the FIR-4 acts as the source of relativistic electrons to the Sgr C NTF, collision of the $``$100 km s-1 cloud with the central part of the NTF, which causes the NTF to appear partly embedded in the cloud can also explain the observations. After the collision of the cloud with the NTF, if the magnetic pressure in the NTF would have been less than that of the cloud, the fields could be pinched or disrupted and the flow of high energy electrons towards part ‘B’ significantly reduced. On the other hand, if the magnetic pressure in the NTF is much larger than the pressure due to the cloud (Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987), then the NTF will remain stable and the cloud may wrap around the NTF. Here, the flow of electrons from the FIR-4 to part ‘B’ of the NTF will not be significantly disrupted.

If flow of electrons has stopped in part ‘B’ (first possibility), then this part of the NTF is likely to show a steeper spectral index. However, the estimated spectral index between 1.6 GHz and 330 MHz is quite flat, which LaRosa et al. (2000) has suggested to be due to the presence of thermal emission from the nearby HII region. In this regard, we note that if the $``$100 km s-1 cloud is moving with a velocity similar to its line of sight velocity in the sky plane, then the collision took place around 5$`\times `$104 years ago. However, to our knowledge, part ‘B’ of the NTF has been imaged with high resolution and sensitivity only up to a few GHz and at this frequency range, the half-life of synchrotron electrons responsible for the emission in an equipartition field of 0.1 mG (LaRosa et al. 2000) is $``$ 105 years. Therefore, unless the magnetic field is much higher than the equipartition value, no significant steepening of the spectral index may be detectable in the presently available data. Hence, to distinguish between the two cases, future polarimetric observations, which traces the direction of the local magnetic field lines, and can show that whether the magnetic field lines in part ‘B’ are pinched, will be useful. We prefer the third model, taking into consideration the available information. Since, the NTF does not show any change of shape or direction near the place of interaction with the $``$100 km s-1 cloud, the magnetic pressure in the NTF is likely to be more than the pressure of the cloud.

## 5 Conclusions

HI absorption studies of three NTFs known as the Sgr C, G359.54+0.18 and G359.79+0.17 using the GMRT have yielded the following results:
(a) For the first time, the Sgr C NTF and the HII region are shown to be located within a few hundred parsecs from the GC.

(b) Our study indicates that the Sgr C HII region is either embedded in or located behind the $``$65 km s-1 molecular cloud, whereas the Sgr C NTF is located at the near side of the cloud, which argues against any possible interaction between the two objects.

(c) A molecular cloud with a velocity of $``$100 km s-1 appears to be associated with the central part of the Sgr C NTF, and on the basis of the presently existing data, it appears that the magnetic pressure in the NTF is higher than the pressure due to the $``$100 km s-1 cloud.

(d) HI absorption by the ‘3 kpc arm’ is detected against all the three NTFs, which indicates that the NTF G359.54+0.18 and G359.79+0.17 are located at a minimum distance of 5.1 kpc from the Sun.

(e) Weak HI absorption (4 $`\sigma `$ level) at $``$140 km s-1 suggests that the NTF G359.54+0.18 is located at a minimum distance of $``$ 8.5 kpc from us.

(f) The maximum distance of the NTF G359.54+0.18 and G359.79+0.17 are estimated to be 10.5 kpc from the Sun.

The present study extends the number of NTFs, which have been found to be located near the GC region to five. With most of the known NTFs now being shown near the GC, there remains little doubt that phenomena related to the central region of the Galaxy are responsible for the creation and maintenance of the NTFs.

###### Acknowledgements.

It is a pleasure to thank A. Pramesh Rao, with whom I have discussed several aspects of this work at various stages. I also thank Jayaram Chengalur, Miller Goss, Rajaram Nityananda, Dharam Vir Lal and Nimisha Kantharia for reading the manuscript and for their useful comments. Cornelia Lang, as the referee, has made several useful comments, which helped to improve the paper, and I would like to thank her. Masato Tsuboi and Tomoharu Oka provided their CS and CO survey data respectively and I wish to thank them. I thank the staff of the GMRT that made these observations possible. GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. I acknowledge of receiving partial funding from the Rekhi Scholarship of the TIFR Endowment Fund.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The decay of an unstable vacuum is a dynamical process. To study this, one has to consider non-supersymmetric theories. Therefore, investigations of this kind of phenomena are difficult, in general.

In this paper, our interest is on condensations of tachyons which can propagate in the bulk. What we have to clarify would be the following two questions. The first one is into what theory the original tachyonic theory decays, and the second one is how to analyze the decay. The answer to the latter is, in principle, clear; one can use a closed string field theory , or matrix formulations of string theories and M-theory . However, such an analysis will be, in practice, difficult to perform. The former question is more difficult to answer. There are two naive expectations for endpoints of the decay. One possibility is to decay into a non-critical string theory, since the Zamolodchikov’s c-theorem  states that the central charge of a worldsheet theory decreases via a relevant deformation. The other is discussed in our previous paper . We argued that there may be a process which connects two critical string theories via a tachyon condensation, when the corresponding low energy effective theory has a scalar potential, two of whose critical points correspond to these critical string theories. We also argued that since the theory flows into a strong coupling theory, the worldsheet analysis, i.e. arguments based on the c-theorem, might be irrelevant for the dynamics of string theory.

In this paper, we will employ the low energy effective theory as a tool, and try to answer the two questions mentioned above. The results of our investigations are summarized as follows. The Zamolodchikov’s c-function of a sigma model is equal to the action functional of the corresponding low energy effective theory . This expression of the c-function was used recently  to show that worldsheet renormalization group flows of a kind correspond to processes which are favored energetically. The relation between the c-function and the effective action can be naturally generalized, and as a result, the decrease of the c-function is related to the decrease of the total energy of the spacetime theory, when the dilaton is trivial. Otherwise, the relation between the c-function and the energy does not necessarily hold. Therefore, we would like to claim that the c-theorem cannot always be a guide to deduce endpoints of the decay. We further study the final states of the decay by using the low energy effective theory which can be regarded as the zeroth-order approximation of the closed string field theory. In some cases, one can relate an evolution of the tachyon vev to a deformation of the geometry of a manifold on which string theory or M-theory are compactified.

As we will show in this paper, the use of the effective theory, in particular a gauged supergravity, would be very fruitful for the investigations of bulk tachyon condensations. We can obtain some explicit results since some of the effective theories have been studied exhaustively. More detailed information of other gauged supergravities, in particular a relation to string theory and M-theory, will be valuable for the study of tachyon condensations.

This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we review the results of . In section 3 we discuss a tachyon condensation different from those in , in which the worldsheet analysis would not break down. We suggest here that there is a subtlety on the comparison of central charges when the background changes during the process. In section 4, we generalize the expression of . We then argue how it is related to the energy and how the decrease of the c-function can deviate from the decrease of the spacetime energy. In section 5, we deduce the possible endpoints of bulk tachyon condensations based on the analysis of the scalar potentials of the low energy effective theories. Section 6 is devoted to discussion.

## 2 Worldsheet RG

As we have learned from the study of condensations of open string tachyons  and localized closed string tachyons , there is a prescription to deduce an endpoint of the tachyon condensations. Suppose that there is a string theory with a tachyon in its mass spectrum. Then a condensation of the tachyon can be described by adding the corresponding vertex operator to the worldsheet action. The added operator is usually taken to be a zero-momentum tachyon vertex and it is a relevant operator. The condensation would make a change of the worldsheet theory to cure the instability indicated by the presence of the tachyon. The endpoint of the condensation is believed to be described by a theory which is the IR fixed point of the RG flow induced by the relevant operator.

It is tempting to speculate that this prescription would also apply to condensations of tachyons propagating in the bulk. However, there seems to be a puzzle concerning the central charge of the worldsheet theory.

The tree level dynamics of strings in a non-trivial background is described by a non-linear sigma model. The background field configuration is encoded in coupling functions of the sigma model. For the sigma model to be conformal, beta-functionals of the coupling functions must vanish, and this condition is equivalent to the on-shell condition of the background fields. Since one imposes the conformal invariance, the corresponding string theory is critical, that is, its central charge is zero after adding contributions from the ghosts.

Assume that a string theory in a background contains a tachyon propagating in the bulk. The presence of the tachyon would be a signal of an instability of the background, and the theory would be deformed so as to cure such the instability. This process would be realized via a condensation of the tachyon, as in the case of open string tachyons  and of localized closed string tachyons . (See also  for earlier study on this phenomena.) During the condensation of localized closed string tachyons, it is claimed that the central charge does not decrease, due to the fact that the relevant space for the tachyons has an infinite volume . This argument does not apply to situations in which tachyons come from a compact space. Also in the case of bulk tachyons, one cannot conclude that the central charge does not need to decrease. Therefore, according to the above discussions, one might expect that a condensation of a bulk tachyon would lead the theory to a non-critical string theory.

On the other hand, the same situation could be investigated by using the spacetime effective theory . Suppose that there is a non-linear sigma model, the bosonic part of whose low energy effective action is

$`S`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle }d^Dx\sqrt{g}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}[R+4_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }^\mu \mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}H_{\mu \nu \rho }H^{\mu \nu \rho }`$ (2.1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}f_{ab}(\varphi )F_{\mu \nu }^aF^{b\mu \nu }g_{IJ}(\varphi )D_\mu \varphi ^ID^\mu \varphi ^JV(\varphi )].`$
The action of this form appears, for example, in the heterotic string theory compactified on a torus with flux . Suppose that the scalar potential has an unstable critical point $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _1^I`$. If there is another critical point $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _2^I`$ which is less unstable than $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _1^I`$ and $`V(\varphi _1)>V(\varphi _2)`$, then it would be natural to expect that the former vacuum decays into the latter vacuum via a condensation of scalar fields, i.e., a shift of the vevs. This process would be interpreted as a bulk tachyon condensation. However, both vacua $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _1^I,\varphi _2^I`$, with appropriate backgrounds, are classical solutions of the effective theory (2.1). Therefore, each vacuum defines a critical string theory with vanishing central charge, and thus the central charge does not decrease during the process. Note that $`\alpha ^{}`$-corrections could be controlled when the effective theory (2.1) possesses some amount of spacetime supersymmetry.

A possible resolution of this puzzle was proposed in . It is summarized as follows. The decay discussed above indeed decrease the central charge, which can be shown in the range of validity of the tree level approximation, but whole trajectory of the decay process in the theory space does not lie within the range, and comparison of central charges of initial and final theories is not possible.

Let us explain our claim mentioned above. To be definite, we consider Type II string theory. The spacetime effective action of the NS-NS fields $`(𝒢_{MN},_{MN},\mathrm{\Phi })`$ is

$$S=\frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}d^{10}x\sqrt{𝒢}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}\left[+4(\widehat{}\mathrm{\Phi })^2\frac{1}{12}_{LMN}^{LMN}\right].$$
(2.2)
Here $`,\widehat{}_M`$ are the scalar curvature and the covariant derivative with respect to the metric $`𝒢_{MN}`$, and $`_{LMN}`$ is the field strength of $`_{MN}`$.

One can obtain a low energy effective action in $`d`$ dimensions via a compactification. In the ordinary toroidal compactifications, the reduction is performed by constructing the fields in terms of fields in $`d`$ dimensions

$$𝒢_{MN}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}g_{\mu \nu }+A_\mu ^lA_{\nu l}& A_{\mu m}\\ A_{\nu n}& G_{mn}\end{array}\right],\text{etc.}$$
(2.3)
and substituting them into the action (2.2). Here $`\mu ,\nu =0,\mathrm{},d1`$ label non-compact directions and $`m,n=d,\mathrm{},9`$ label compact (internal) directions. In the toroidal compactifications, $`g_{\mu \nu }`$ etc. are taken to be independent of the internal coordinates $`y^m`$.

One can consider a more general compactification by allowing some $`d`$-dimensional fields to be $`y^m`$-dependent, and such a reduction will produce a non-trivial scalar potential in the reduced action. This is known as the Scherk-Schwarz reduction . We will derive the reduced action below. For simplicity, we will omit terms including gauge fields $`A_{\mu m}`$ in $`d`$ dimensions. The resulting action is meaningful as long as we consider classical solutions with constant scalars, i.e., vacuum solutions.

The reduction ansatz we make is

$$𝒢_{MN}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}g_{\mu \nu }(x)& 0\\ 0& G_{mn}(x,y)\end{array}\right],_{MN}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}B_{\mu \nu }(x)& 0\\ 0& B_{mn}(x,y)\end{array}\right],\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }(x)$$
(2.4)
By substituting this ansatz into (2.2), one obtains

$`S`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle }d^{10}x\sqrt{g}e^{2\varphi }[R+4(\varphi )^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}H_{\mu \nu \rho }H^{\mu \nu \rho }`$ (2.5)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}G^{mn}G_{mn}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}G^{km}G^{ln}B_{kl}B_{mn}V],`$
where

$`\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{log}detG,`$ (2.6)
$`V`$ $`=`$ $`G^{mn}R_{mn}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}G^{il}G^{jm}G^{kn}H_{ijk}H_{lmn}.`$ (2.7)
Here $`R,_\mu `$ are the scalar curvature and the covariant derivative with respect to the metric $`g_{\mu \nu }`$, and $`R_{mn}`$ is the Ricci tensor with respect to $`G_{mn}`$. If the integrand is independent of $`y^m`$, the action (2.5) can be regarded as an effective action in $`d`$ dimensions with a suitable rescaling of $`\kappa `$.

For later purpose, we show the equations of motion of $`G_{mn},B_{mn}`$,

$`R_{mn}+\mathrm{}`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (2.8)
$`G^{kl}_kH_{lmn}+\mathrm{}`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (2.9)
where $`\mathrm{}`$ denotes terms including $`_\mu G_{mn},_\mu B_{mn}`$. In terms of $`d`$-dimensional fields, these equations would correspond to

$$\frac{V}{\varphi ^I}=0,$$
(2.10)
for constant solutions, where $`\varphi ^I`$ represent $`G_{mn},B_{mn}`$ collectively, as long as the reduction is a consistent truncation.

Since the relation between the ten-dimensional action (2.2) and the reduced action (2.5) is clear, one can easily obtain one-loop beta-functionals of a sigma model whose low energy effective action is the reduced action (2.5), from the beta-functionals

$`\beta _{MN}^𝒢`$ $`=`$ $`_{MN}+2\widehat{}_M\widehat{}_N\mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}_{MKL}_{N}^{}{}_{}{}^{KL},`$ (2.11)
$`\beta _{MN}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\widehat{}^L_{LMN}+\widehat{}^L\mathrm{\Phi }_{LMN},`$ (2.12)
$`\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\widehat{}^2\mathrm{\Phi }+(\widehat{}\mathrm{\Phi })^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{24}}_{LMN}^{LMN},`$ (2.13)
by substituting the ansatz (2.4). We assume, for simplicity, that $`G_{mn},B_{mn}`$ are independent of $`x^\mu `$. Then one obtains

$`\beta _{\mu \nu }^𝒢`$ $`=`$ $`R_{\mu \nu }+2_\mu _\nu \mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}H_{\mu \rho \lambda }H_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{\rho \lambda },`$ (2.14)
$`\beta _{mn}^𝒢`$ $`=`$ $`R_{mn}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}G^{ik}G^{jl}H_{mij}H_{nkl},`$ (2.15)
$`\beta _{\mu \nu }^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}^\rho H_{\rho \mu \nu }+^\rho \mathrm{\Phi }H_{\rho \mu \nu },`$ (2.16)
$`\beta _{mn}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}G^{kl}_kH_{lmn},`$ (2.17)
$`\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}^2\mathrm{\Phi }+(\mathrm{\Phi })^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{24}}G^{il}G^{jm}G^{kn}H_{ijk}H_{lmn},`$ (2.18)
and the other components vanish.

It is known  that the condition $`\beta _{MN}^𝒢=\beta _{MN}^{}=0`$ ensures the existence of a Virasoro algebra with central charge $`c=6\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }`$. Since $`\beta _{mn}^𝒢=0,\beta _{mn}^{}=0`$ coincide with the equations of motion of $`G_{mn},B_{mn}`$, respectively, one can take a background

$`g_{\mu \nu }=\eta _{\mu \nu },B_{\mu \nu }=0,\mathrm{\Phi }=\text{const.},`$
$`\varphi ^I=\text{const.    such that}{\displaystyle \frac{V}{\varphi ^I}}=0,`$ (2.19)
and obtains the central charge

$`c=6\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}G^{il}G^{jm}G^{kn}H_{ijk}H_{lmn}`$ (2.20)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}V.`$
Suppose that the scalar potential $`V`$ has two critical points $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _1^I,\varphi _2^I`$ with $`V(\varphi _1)>V(\varphi _2)`$, and $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _1^I`$ corresponds to an unstable vacuum. If $`V(\varphi _1)=0`$, then (2.19) is indeed a classical solution and it defines a perturbative vacuum with vanishing central charge. This vacuum would be expected to decay into the second vacuum $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _2^I`$, but since $`V(\varphi _2)<0`$, the corresponding classical solution would be a linear dilaton background and worldsheet analyses in this background would not be reliable due to string loop corrections. What we can say at least is that the configuration (2.19) with $`\varphi ^I=\varphi _2^I`$ would be in the vicinity of the linear dilaton background in the theory space and the central charge for the configuration is smaller than the initial central charge, due to (2.20).

This result would be interpreted as follows. The transition from (2.19) with $`\varphi _1^I`$ to that with $`\varphi _2^I`$ would correspond to a condensation of a bulk tachyon. It is natural since this is a shift of vevs of the scalars, and the central charge of the sigma model decreases. The transition from (2.19) with $`\varphi _2^I`$ to the linear dilaton background would be a backreaction of the condensation. During this process, the dilaton behaves non-trivially and the worldsheet analyses would not valid. Note that the real process would not be able to devided into such two periods, and the direct investigation of such a simultaneous process would be difficult.

If $`V(\varphi _2)=0`$, the endpoint of the decay is well understood. However, in this case the initial unstable vacuum would be strongly-coupled, by assumption, and the investigation of whole process of the decay would be also difficult.

To summarize, it seem to be good to apply the RG prescription to bulk tachyon condensations, but it might not be so useful since the backreaction would change the background drastically.

## 3 Rolling down with constant dilaton

As we briefly commented in , when the scalar potential does not depend on the dilaton, transitions between critical points of the potential would occur without going into a strongly-coupled string theory. Then the same puzzle discussed in the beginning of the previous section will reappear in these cases. Thus we have to investigate such cases and find what is going on.

We would like to consider a string theory whose low energy effective theory contains a non-trivial scalar potential which is a function independent of the dilaton $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$. There is a supergravity theory of this kind  which is familiar in the study of AdS/CFT correspondence . This is a five-dimensional theory with maximal supersymmetry, which is believed to be a consistent truncation of Type IIB supergravity compactified on $`S^5`$. It contains 42 scalars which is identified with the coordinates of the coset $`E_{6(6)}/USp(4)`$, and the scalar potential is a function on the coset. The potential is invariant under $`SL(2,𝐑)E_{6(6)}`$, and this corresponds to the $`SL(2,𝐑)`$ invariance of Type IIB supergravity. Thus the potential is independent of the dilaton. Note that we have discussed in the Einstein frame. In the string frame, the scalar potential would be multiplied by an exponential of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$.

The scalar potential has many critical points  and they are interpreted, in AdS/CFT correspondence, IR fixed points of the $`𝒩`$=4 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions perturbed by relevant deformations. Then, according to the correspondence, transitions between the critical points would also be relevant deformations of the corresponding Type IIB string theory. Therefore AdS/CFT correspondence would imply that there may be such a process which connects two critical string theories corresponding to the critical points, although along the whole process the tree level approximation seems to be reliable.

Since the relation between the five-dimensional supergravity mentioned above and a sigma model is not clear, the investigation of this case is not possible. However, the problem is more general and it can be stated as follows. If $`\mathrm{\Phi }=`$const. is a classical solution regardless of the value of the scalar potential, then tachyon condensations could occur without going into a strong coupling background and the RG prescription for tachyon condensations would not apply to this case. Below we will argue that the situation is quite different from the ones discussed in the previous section and the comparison of central charges would be a subtle issue.

What we have done in the previous section is to consider background field configurations satisfying

$`\beta _{MN}^𝒢`$ $`=`$ $`_{MN}+2\widehat{}_M\widehat{}_N\mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}_{MKL}_{N}^{}{}_{}{}^{KL}=0,`$ (3.1)
$`\beta _{MN}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\widehat{}^L_{LMN}+\widehat{}^L\mathrm{\Phi }_{LMN}=0,`$ (3.2)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ $`=`$ const. (3.3)
The configurations are not necessarily on-shell configurations since the last condition (3.3) is not equivalent to $`\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$.

When we further require that (3.3) satisfies the equation of motion of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, the allowed configurations are only on-shell configurations. One can see this from the fact that the equation of motion of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ can be rewritten as

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`+4\widehat{}^2\mathrm{\Phi }4(\widehat{}\mathrm{\Phi })^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}^2`$ (3.4)
$`=`$ $`𝒢^{MN}\beta _{MN}^𝒢4\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi },`$
i.e., the equation of motion of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is equivalent to $`\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$ provided that $`\beta _{MN}^𝒢=0`$.

Let us reconsider central charges in this case. Since for every critical point of the scalar potential one has to take an on-shell solution in order to ensure the existence of the Virasoro algebra, one cannot obtain, in this approach, a sigma model with a non-zero central charge. Therefore it is tempting to conclude that in this case central charge does not change in the decay process.

However, there is a difference from the cases in the previous section. In those cases, the background geometry can be always taken to be flat, but in this case, since the background has to be on-shell, the spacetime is curved according to the value of the scalar potential. Thus one has to compare central charges for different background geometries. Recall that the central charge is a measure of the degrees of freedom whose definition strongly depends on the background geometry. Thus a naive comparison would not make sense. In the next section, we will argue a relation between the central charge of sigma models and the energy of the system in the spacetime sense, and a similar subtlety will appear there.

## 4 Central charge as spacetime energy

We have discussed the central charge of a sigma model in a special situation in which all but one beta-functional for the background fields vanish. There is an expression of the central charge, or c-function, for a more general situation .

The Zamolodchikov’s c-function $`C(r)`$ is defined in terms of correlation functions of a two-dimensional field theory,

$$C(r)=2F(r)G(r)\frac{3}{8}H(r),$$
(4.1)
where $`r^2=z\overline{z}`$ and

$`F(r)`$ $`=`$ $`z^4T_{zz}(z,\overline{z})T_{zz}(0,0),`$
$`G(r)`$ $`=`$ $`4z^3\overline{z}T_{zz}(z,\overline{z})T_{z\overline{z}}(0,0)`$ (4.2)
$`=`$ $`4z^3\overline{z}T_{z\overline{z}}(z,\overline{z})T_{zz}(0,0),`$
$`H(r)`$ $`=`$ $`16z^2\overline{z}^2T_{z\overline{z}}(z,\overline{z})T_{z\overline{z}}(0,0)0.`$
We have assumed the rotational invariance. Then the derivative of $`C(r)`$ is non-positive

$$r\frac{d}{dr}C(r)=\frac{3}{4}H(r),$$
(4.3)
due to the conservation of the energy-momentum tensor.

The sigma model considered in  corresponds to the “spatial part” of the sigma model describing a string theory. Thus the background fields of the sigma model consist of $`G_{mn},B_{mn},\mathrm{\Phi }`$ in our notation. The c-function (4.1) is given in terms of the fields, and it is shown that the derivative of the c-function is non-positive and the vanishing of the derivative means that the sigma model is conformal. Explicitly, the c-function is given as

$`C(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dk}{k}}f(rk)2\kappa ^2S(k),`$ (4.4)
$`S(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle d^{10d}x\sqrt{G}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}\left[R4_m\mathrm{\Phi }^m\mathrm{\Phi }+4^m_m\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{1}{12}H_{lmn}H^{lmn}\right]}.`$ (4.5)
Here $`f(x)`$ is a function which is necessary for the Fourier transformation from $`k`$ to $`r`$. By integrating by parts, it is shown that $`S(k)`$ is a part of the low energy effective action. The dependence on $`k`$, the renormalization scale, of $`S(k)`$ comes from that of the fields themselves.

The equation (4.4) relates the c-function to the effective action. This relation is natural for several reasons. Firstly, since both the conformal invariance condition and the on-shell condition can be characterized by the extremization of c-function and the effective action, respectively, the equivalence of these two conditions would imply the relation like (4.4). It would be more apparent when the RG equations are written as follows,

$$k\frac{d}{dk}G_{mn}=\frac{2\kappa ^2}{\sqrt{G}}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}\left[\frac{\delta S}{\delta G^{mn}}+\frac{1}{4}G_{mn}\frac{\delta S}{\delta \mathrm{\Phi }}\right],\text{etc.}$$
(4.6)
Secondly, under the condition $`\beta _{mn}^G=0`$, the action can be written as

$$S(k)=\frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}d^{10d}x\sqrt{G}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}(4)\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }.$$
(4.7)
Therefore it is consistent with the fact that the central charge is proportional to $`\beta ^\mathrm{\Phi }`$ under the conditions discussed previously.

It is well-known that the value of the Zamolodchikov’s c-function at a conformal fixed point is equal to the central charge of the conformal theory. For the c-function (4.4), however, it is not the case. This is because in  the c-function is derived from correlators which are not normalized as usual, and in particular,

$$1=V(k)d^{10d}x\sqrt{G}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}.$$
(4.8)
Then the central charge should be related to $`S(k)/V(k)`$, and it need not be a monotonic function due to the scale dependent factor $`V(k)`$. In other words, the decreasing quantity is the c-function, not the central charge. Moreover, when $`V(k)\mathrm{}`$, the central charge does not change even when the c-function decreases by a finite amount. This fact would explain why the central charge does not decrease during condensations of localized closed string tachyons .

The natural extension of (4.4) to the c-function of a sigma model for whole spacetime would be to replace $`S(k)`$ with the total spacetime effective action $`S_{total}(k)`$. It is known that the spacetime action is equal to the time integral of the Hamiltonian (times $`1`$) under some conditions . Therefore, as discussed in , the c-function is related to the energy of the system in the spacetime sense. From this point of view, the meaning of the c-theorem is very clear; the physical process occurs toward a state with lower energy than the initial one. One can also see from this relation that the comparison of central charges for different backgrounds is a subtle issue; this corresponds to comparing energies defined in different background geometries.

When the dilaton has a non-trivial configuration, however, one has to be careful not to conclude immediately that decreasing the c-function corresponds to decreasing the energy. It is because the effective action related to the c-function is written in the string frame, while the action related to the energy is in the Einstein frame. Their difference is a surface term, and it is irrelevant for the constant dilaton case  but otherwise would change the value of the action and the relation between the c-function and the energy may break down. This would be another explanation why the RG prescription for tachyon condensation would not valid for analysis of whole process of the condensation.

## 5 Internal space geometry from scalar vevs

In the previous section, we have discussed the relation between the c-function of a sigma model and the action of the low energy effective theory, which can be related to the total spacetime energy of the system. This relation would provide a clear understanding of the c-theorem; the energetically-favored process occurs physically. Moreover, a slight difference between the c-function obtained in  and the total energy would suggest that there might be some modification of the c-theorem when the dilaton becomes non-trivially, that is, the tree level approximation for string theory is not reliable.

In the rest of this paper, we will show another use of the spacetime theory to investigate a condensation of a closed string tachyon propagating in the bulk. That is, we deduce a final state of the tachyon condensation.

We consider in this section a gauged supergravity which is a consistent truncation of a string theory or M-theory compactified on a non-trivial manifold. The theory has a scalar potential, which has many critical points. Some of them correspond to stable vacua of the theory, and the others to unstable vacua. When one defines the theory on one of the unstable vacua, it would be deformed via a condensation of an unstable mode, until the theory will reach another vacuum which is then stable. Therefore, one can obtain the knowledge of the condensation by examining the shape of the scalar potential.

Recall that the scalars in the gauged supergravity in lower dimensions originally come, in principle, from fields of a theory in higher dimensions, for example, metric of the internal manifold. Thus the vevs of the scalars in a lower dimensional theory should have information of the target space geometry in a higher dimensional theory. This is indeed the case, and some of the critical points of the scalar potential are related to some internal manifolds . Moreover, in a particular case, there is a general formula  to obtain the metric of the internal manifold from the vevs of the scalars. It is clear that bulk tachyon condensations inevitably deform background geometries, since they cannot be decoupled from the bulk gravity. Therefore it is important to know how the background geometry is deformed via the tachyon condensation. The relation between the scalar vevs and the internal geometry will enable one to investigate it.

The most interesting final state of the condensation would be the most stable vacuum. In ordinary supersymmetric field theory without gravity, the most stable vacua is the states with zero energy. This is also the case for open string tachyon condensations in superstring . However, in supergravity theories the situation is different since its scalar potential is not necessarily non-negative. Moreover, in many cases the potential is not even bounded below. Naively, in such cases, the system would roll down the potential eternally toward the “bottom”. Thus it would be interesting to ask to what kind of theory it is deformed by such an evolution of the scalar vevs. We discuss this issue below with explicit examples.

### 5.1 M-theory on $`S^7`$

In this subsection, we discuss an $`𝒩=8`$ gauged supergravity in four dimensions , which is a consistent truncation of the eleven-dimensional supergravity compactified on $`S^7`$ . This theory has been well-studied and several critical points of its scalar potential have been found .

$`S^7`$ can be regarded as an $`S^1`$-bundle over $`CP^3`$. Therefore, M-theory compactified on $`S^7`$ can be regarded as Type IIA string theory compactified on $`CP^3`$ with R-R fluxes. From this, we can regard instabilities which appear in the gauged supergravity as unstable modes of the Type IIA strings. Since the eleven-dimensional metric of the classical solution is a direct product $`AdS_4\times S^7`$, the R-R fluxes do not depend on the non-compact ($`AdS`$) coordinates. If there is an unstable mode coming from scalars, it is a tachyon in the bulk and thus its condensation would decrease the effective c-function discussed in section 4. The situation considered is similar to the Melvin background in M-theory , except for the compactness of the relevant geometry.

The gauged supergravity contains 70 scalars which can be identified with the coordinates of the coset $`E_{7(7)}/SU(8)`$. It is convenient to represent them in terms of a group element of the $`E_{7(7)}`$ which acts on the 56 representation,

$$𝒱=\left(\begin{array}{cc}u_{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{IJ}& v_{ijKL}\\ \overline{v}^{klIJ}& \overline{u}_{}^{kl}{}_{KL}{}^{}\end{array}\right).$$
(5.1)
We follow the notations and conventions of . The indices take values from 1 to 8, and $`ij`$, $`KL`$ etc. are anti-symmetrized. Note that an $`SU(8)`$ part of $`𝒱`$ is not physical degrees of freedom.

The scalar potential is given as

$$𝒫(𝒱)=\frac{1}{24}|A_2|^2\frac{3}{4}|A_1|^2,$$
(5.2)
where the tensors $`A_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{ij}`$ and $`A_{2}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{jkl}`$ are complicated functions of $`u`$ and $`v`$ in (5.1). One can see that the potential has a negative-definite term, and this potential is indeed unbounded below.

The directions along which the $`𝒫(𝒱)`$ diverges in a limit correspond to the non-compact directions of $`E_{7(7)}`$, or more conveniently, the non-compact directions of $`SL(8,𝐑)E_{7(7)}`$. Explicitly, we consider one-parameter subgroups of $`E_{7(7)}`$ corresponding to

$$X=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}e^{a_1s}& & & \\ & e^{a_2s}& & \\ & & \mathrm{}& \\ & & & e^{a_8s}\end{array}\right)SL(8,𝐑),$$
(5.3)
with $`a_k=0`$. The explicit form of the potential (5.2) has been calculated in special cases , by using as $`𝒱`$ the element of the one-parameter subgroup corresponding to (5.3),

$`𝒫_{7,1}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}(35e^{2s}14e^{6s}+e^{14s}),`$ (5.4)
$`𝒫_{6,2}`$ $`=`$ $`3(e^{2s}+e^{2s}),`$ (5.5)
$`𝒫_{5,3}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}(5e^{2s}+10e^{2s/3}+e^{10s/3}),`$ (5.6)
$`𝒫_{4,4}`$ $`=`$ $`(e^{2s}+4+e^{2s}),`$ (5.7)
where $`𝒫_{p,8p}`$ is the potential (5.2) for the element (5.3) with

$$a_1=\mathrm{}=a_p,a_{p+1}=\mathrm{}=a_8,$$
(5.8)
and their values are suitably chosen. This corresponds to the direction which preserves $`SO(p)\times SO(8p)`$ symmetry. Note that $`𝒫_{p,q}(s)=𝒫_{q,p}(ps/q)`$. A point $`s=0`$ is always a critical point which corresponds to the round $`S^7`$. One can see that there are directions along which $`𝒫\mathrm{}`$ as $`|s|\mathrm{}`$.

As mentioned above, the vevs of the scalars contain information of the deformation of $`S^7`$. How $`S^7`$ is deformed for $`|s|\mathrm{}`$ ? To investigate it, one has to reconstruct the metric of the $`S^7`$ from the scalar vevs. This was achieved in , and in particular, the simple formula for the metric for the vevs corresponding to (5.3) was obtained. The $`S^7`$ is deformed to an ellipsoid defined by

$$x_mP_{mn}x_n=\text{const.},(x_1,\mathrm{},x_8)𝐑^8,$$
(5.9)
where $`P=X^2`$, and the metric on this ellipsoid is the induced metric with a scale factor $`\mu `$,

$`g_{mn}`$ $`=`$ $`2^{2/9}\mu ^{2/3}(\delta _{mn}\widehat{n}_m\widehat{n}_n),`$ (5.10)
$`\mu ^2`$ $`=`$ $`x_mP_{ml}P_{ln}x_n,`$ (5.11)
where $`\widehat{n}_m`$ is the unit normal vector of the ellipsoid. From this result, one can see that the $`x_k`$-direction shrinks (extends) when $`a_k>0`$ ($`a_k<0`$) as $`s+\mathrm{}`$, when the overall factor is ignored. Since $`X`$ is an element of $`SL(8,𝐑)`$, not all the directions simultaniously shrink or extend. In other words, there must be a direction which extends as the scalar vevs grow.

Among the directions for $`𝒫\mathrm{}`$, an interesting case would be the direction which preserves $`SO(2)\times SO(6)`$ symmetry. In this case, the deformed $`S^7`$ is given as

$$e^{3t}((x_1)^2+(x_2)^2)+e^t((x_3)^2+\mathrm{}+(x_8)^2)=\rho ^2$$
(5.12)
in $`𝐑^8`$, and $`ts`$. The metric on this ellipsoid which is manifestly $`SO(2)\times SO(6)`$ invariant is

$$ds^2=\rho ^2\left[\left(e^t+e^{3t}\frac{r^2}{1r^2}\right)dr^2+e^tr^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_5^2+e^{3t}(1r^2)d\theta ^2\right],$$
(5.13)
where $`0r1`$, and we have used a parametrization

$`x_1=e^{3t/2}\rho \sqrt{1r^2}\mathrm{cos}\theta ,`$ (5.14)
$`x_2=e^{3t/2}\rho \sqrt{1r^2}\mathrm{sin}\theta ,`$ (5.15)
$`(x_3)^2+\mathrm{}+(x_8)^2=\rho ^2e^tr^2,`$ (5.16)
so that this is a product of a six-dimensional ball and a circle whose radius depends on $`r`$. When $`t`$ is large, then

$$ds^2\rho ^2\left[d\stackrel{~}{r}^2+\stackrel{~}{r}^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_5^2+e^{3t}(1e^t\stackrel{~}{r}^2)d\theta ^2\right],$$
(5.17)
where $`\stackrel{~}{r}=e^{t/2}r`$. Therefore, in the large $`t`$ limit, the ellipsoid is approximately the direct product of the six-dimensional flat space and the small $`S^1`$ with a constant radius, as long as $`\stackrel{~}{r}<<e^{t/2}`$. By choosing this $`S^1`$ as the M-theory circle, this limiting theory would be regarded as a weak coupling Type IIA string theory. Thus this might suggest that a tachyon condensation of this theory would have a final state which is a weakly-coupled Type IIA string theory in the flat spacetime. Note that no R-R 1-form appears via the dimensional reduction. Since the $`S^1`$ chosen above is not the same circle with the one, reducing along which provides Type IIA string theory compactified on $`CP^3`$, the relation between the initial and the final states would be non-trivial.

However, the argument given above is too naive since we did not take into account the overall factor $`\mu `$. In fact, the proper metric is, up to a trivial numerical factor,

$`ds_M^2`$ $`=`$ $`\rho ^2\mu ^{2/3}\left[\left(e^t+e^{3t}{\displaystyle \frac{r^2}{1r^2}}\right)dr^2+e^tr^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_5^2+e^{3t}(1r^2)d\theta ^2\right],`$ (5.18)
$`\mu ^2`$ $`=`$ $`e^{3t}(1r^2)+e^tr^2.`$ (5.19)
Through the dimensional reduction along the $`\theta `$ direction, one obtains the metric for the corresponding Type IIA string theory

$$ds_{IIA}^2=\rho ^2e^{3t/2}\mu ^1\sqrt{1r^2}\left[\left(e^t+e^{3t}\frac{r^2}{1r^2}\right)dr^2+e^tr^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_5^2\right].$$
(5.20)
Then, one can calculate the size of this space and show that

$$_0^1𝑑r\sqrt{g_{rr}}0(t\mathrm{}).$$
(5.21)
Therefore, the internal space becomes small as the scalar vevs grow. Note that the radius of the M-theory circle we chose is small everywhere for large $`t`$, so that the resulting theory should be a weak coupling theory. However, the compactification manifold is a strange one, and the resulting theory would not be familiar for us.

A similar phenomenon will occur in M-theory compactified on $`S^4`$, although the relation to string theory would be unclear. The consistent truncation of the eleven-dimensional supergravity is a seven-dimensional supergravity . The explicit form of the scalar potential along $`SO(2)\times SO(3)`$-invariant direction was obtained in , and the internal metric was constructed  in terms of the seven-dimensional fields.

### 5.2 Type IIB string theory on $`S^5`$

Since the analysis in this case is parallel to that in the previous subsection, we will discuss briefly.

The truncated theory is believed to be the five-dimensional gauged supergravity mentioned before, and critical points of its scalar potential is well-studied. In fact, some of them are shown to be unstable . Such an unstable vacuum would decay via a tachyon condensation, and as a result, the scalar vev would roll down the potential toward its “bottom”.

As before, we focus on the direction which is invariant under $`SO(2)\times SO(4)`$. The explicit expression of the potential restricted to this direction parametrized be $`\lambda `$ is

$$𝒫(\lambda )=\frac{1}{4}(e^{2\lambda }+2e^\lambda ).$$
(5.22)
Note that the critical point $`\lambda =0`$ is the maximally supersymmetric vacuum, so that it cannot decay into $`|\lambda |\mathrm{}`$. However, some other unstable vacua might decay into a direction toward $`|\lambda |\mathrm{}`$.

The formula for the metric of the internal $`S^5`$ in terms of the five-dimensional fields was conjectured in , and in particular, along the $`SO(2)\times SO(4)`$-invariant direction the $`S^5`$ is expected to be deformed to an ellipsoid

$$e^{2t}((x_1)^2+(x_2)^2)+e^t((x_3)^2+\mathrm{}+(x_6)^2)=\rho ^2.$$
(5.23)
Therefore, based on the same analysis in the previous subsection, this background will approach a strange manifold which is an $`S^1`$-bundle and the radius is small. Since we have considered Type IIB string theory, this final theory could be regarded as Type IIA string theory compactified on a small four-dimensional manifold.

## 6 Discussion

We have investigated the condensations of the bulk closed string tachyons by using the spacetime effective theory. It would be the most suitable situation in which the effective theory is a gauged supergravity, and then the tachyons appear when one choose an unstable vacuum. The spacetime supersymmetry strongly restrict the dynamics, so that it should be expected that one could control part of quantum corrections, even when one would like to analyze a non-supersymmetric background.

We have considered only the cases in which the gauge group is compact. This is because one can relate the vevs of the scalars to the geometry of the internal manifold. There are many other gauged supergravities with non-compact gauge groups, and critical points of the scalar potentials were found . However, their geometric origins do not seem to be understood well until now. It is expected that relations between such gauged supergravities and higher dimensional theories would provide us more examples of bulk tachyon condensations, and our understanding of the condensations would become deeper. A proposed correspondence  will be relevant in this direction of research.

Another generalization can be considered. Since we have focused on the maximally supersymmetric theories, the scalar potentials are completely determined by the supersymmetry. It is plausible since then we can obtain explicit formulae. But if we would like to have a more general potential to consider a more general situation, we have to reduce the number of supersymmetry. There is a nice characterization of a kind of $`𝒩=2`$ gauged supergravities in four dimensions. They can be realized as the low energy effective theory of Type II string theory compactified on a manifold with the SU(3) structure (see e.g.  and references theirin). A six-dimensional manifold $`M`$ with the SU(3) structure admits a single SU(3) invariant spinor on $`M`$ which is not required to be covariantly constant. For this reason, the four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime is not, in general, a classical solution of the effective theory, that is, there is a non-trivial scalar potential. This realization of gauged supergravities will provide various examples of theories with unstable vacua, and one could extract a general feature of the decays of them. The investigation of a meaning of the SU(3) structure in terms of a two-dimensional theory is also interesting, and would be important to understand the mirror symmetry in the presence of flux.

We have argued that the sigma model approach would not apply to whole process of the bulk tachyon condensations. However, it would be still useful to study properties of each vacuum. It is well-known that the notion of stability depends on what background the theory is defined . To understand them in terms of the sigma model would be interesting.

Our interest has been mainly on the bulk tachyon condensations. The usefulness of the spacetime action might, however, continue to hold for the localized tachyon condensations . Localized tachyons usually come from twisted sectors, and thus it would be realized by just adding the corresponding matter fields in the effective action. Then it would be possible to do the similar analysis as we have done in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank T. Kimura, N. Sakai, T. Takayanagi and Y. Yasui for valuable discussions.