A proposal for lowering the coupling unification scale

In the presence of an external electric field an ensemble of short open strings in equilibrium with the heat bath provided by the Euclidean worldvolume of a stack of D-branes undergoes a continuous transition to a long string phase. The transition temperature is at or below the string scale. We point out that this phenomenon provides a simple mechanism within string theory for the lowering of the strong-electro-weak coupling unification scale by up to two orders of magnitude relative to the string scale.