Tachyon condensation on brane sphalerons

We consider a sphaleron solution in field theory that provides a toy model for unstable D-branes of string theory. We investigate the tachyon condensation on a Dp-brane. The localized modes, including a tachyon, arise in the spectrum of a sphaleron solution of a 4 field theory on p+1 × S1. We use these modes to find a multiscalar tachyon potential living on the sphaleron world-volume. A complete cancelation between brane tension and the minimum of the tachyon potential is found as the size of the circle becomes small.