Chaotic instability in the BFSS matrix model

Abstract

Chaotic scattering is a manifestation of transient chaos realized by the scattering with non-integrable potential. When the initial position is taken in the potential, a particle initially exhibits chaotic motion, but escapes outside after a certain period of time. The time to stay inside the potential can be seen as lifetime and this escape process may be regarded as a kind of instability. The process of this type exists in the Banks-Fischler-Shenker-Susskind (BFSS) matrix model in which the potential has flat directions. We discuss this chaotic instability by reducing the system with an ansatz to a simple dynamical system and present the associated fractal structure. We also show the singular behavior of the time delay function and compute the fractal dimension. This chaotic instability is the basic mechanism by which membranes are unstable, which is also common to supermembranes at quantum level.