Cornalba, LCosta, MsPenedones, João Miguel2016-03-312016-03-312016-03-31200510.1103/PhysRevD.72.046002https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/125216It is well known that spherical D-branes are nucleated in the presence of an external RR electric field. Using the description of D-branes as solitons of the tachyon field on non-BPS D-branes, we show that the brane nucleation process can be seen as the decay of the tachyon false vacuum. This process can describe the decay of flux-branes in string theory or the decay of quintessence potentials arising in flux compactifications.text::journal::journal article::research article