Cascade of instabilities in the classical limit of the BMN matrix model

Abstract: We study the leading (LO) and the next-to-leading order (NLO) stability of multipole perturbations for a static dielectric M2-brane with spherical topology in the 11-dimensional maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background. We observe a cascade of instabilities that originates from the dipole (j=1) and quadrupole (j=2) sectors (the only unstable sectors of the LO) and propagates towards all the multipoles of the NLO.