Tachyon Condensation and Universal Solutions in String Field Theory

We investigate a non-perturbative vacuum in open string field theory expanded around the analytic classical solution which has been found in the universal Fock space generated by matter Virasoro generators and ghost oscillators. We carry out level-truncation analyses up to level (6, 18) in the theory around one-parameter families of the solution. We observe that the value of the vacuum energy approaches the D-brane tension as the approximation level is increased, but this nonperturbative vacuum disappears at the boundary of the parameter space. These results provide strong evidence for the conjecture that, although the universal solutions are pure gauge in almost all the parameter space, they are regarded as the tachyon vacuum solution at the boundary. E-mail address: [email protected]