String field theory and tachyon field

In this thesis, we study Sen's conjecture on tachyon condensation by using string field theories, i.e. boundary string field theory (BSFT) and cubic string field theory (CSFT).; In the BSFT side, the first explicit calculation of effective tachyon action for the bosonic string was given by Witten ten years ago and by many other authors in the last two years. It was extended to the superstring case shortly after. In our work, we give an explicit calculation of Green functions for the fermionic fields and compute the effective tachyon action for the superstring. The results we obtain agree with earlier results. We then generalize the BSFT method to one loop level. The tachyon condensation at one loop level is systematically studied, and many interesting results are obtained which verify Sen's conjecture. We also apply this method to the non-orientable theory at one loop level, where the expected divergence cancellation is reproduced and the similar effective tachyon action is obtained. By using the boundary state formalism, we verify the duality between open and closed strings.; In the CSFT side, since there is no known solution to this theory, tachyon condensation can only be studied by numerical methods, i.e. level truncation. However, at the tachyon vacuum, CSFT is simplified to vacuum string field theory (VSFT) which has a solution - sliver state. By adding a tachyon vertex to the boundary of the sliver state, we have calculated the effective action.