Cosmology of the tachyon in brane inflation

In certain implementations of the brane inflationary paradigm, the exit from inflation occurs when the branes annihilate through tachyon condensation. We investigate various cosmological effects produced by this tachyonic era. We find that only a very small region of the parameter space (corresponding to slow roll with tiny inflaton mass) allows for the tachyon to contribute some e-folds to inflation. In addition, non-adiabatic density perturbations are generated at the end of inflation. When the brane is moving relativistically this contribution can be of the same order as fluctuations produced 55 e-folds before the end of inflation. The additional contribution is exactly scale invariant and enhances the tensor/scalar ratio. Additional non-Gaussianities will also be generated, sharpening current constraints on Dirac-Born-Infeld-type models which already predict a significantly non-Gaussian signal.