Myers effect and tachyon condensation Original Research Article

D0-branes are unstable in the presence of an R–R field strength background. A fuzzy two-sphere is classically stable under such a background, this phenomenon being called the Myers effect. We analyze this effect from the viewpoint of tachyon condensation. It is explicitly shown that a fuzzy two-sphere is realized by the condensation of tachyons which appear from strings connecting different D0-branes. The formation of a fuzzy CP2 is also investigated by considering an SU(3) invariant R–R field strength background. We find that the dynamics of the D-branes depends on the properties of the associated algebra.