Scaling law for membrane lifetime

Abstract

Membrane configurations in the Banks-Fischler-Shenker-Susskind matrix model are unstable due to the existence of flat directions in the potential and the decay process can be seen as a realization of chaotic scattering. In this note, we compute the lifetime of a membrane in a reduced model. The resulting lifetime exhibits scaling laws with respect to energy, coupling constant and a cut-off scale. We numerically evaluate the scaling exponents, which cannot be fixed by the dimensional analysis. Finally, some applications of the results are discussed.

15 pages, 6 figures, v2: minor corrections and a reference added, v3: an appendix added and typos corrected, published version (NPB)