M-theory as a dynamical system generator

Abstract: We review our recent work on ellipsoidal M2-brane solutions in the large-N limit of the BMN matrix model. These bosonic finite-energy membranes live inside SO(3)xSO(6) symmetric plane-wave spacetimes and correspond to local extrema of the energy functional. They are static in SO(3) and stationary in SO(6). Chaos appears at the level of radial stability analysis through the explicitly derived spectrum of eigenvalues. The angular perturbation analysis is suggestive of the presence of weak turbulence instabilities that propagate from low to high orders in perturbation theory.