Instabilities in the gravitational background and string theory

Abstract

We indicate the tentative source of instability in the two-dimensional black hole background. There are relevant operators among the tachyon and the higher level vertex operators in the conformal field theory. Connection of this instability with Hawking radiation is not obvious. The situation is somewhat analogous to fields in the background of a negative mass Euclidean Schwarzschild solution (in four dimensions). Speculation is made about decay of the Minkowski black hole into finite temperature flat space.