On D0 brane polarization by tidal forces

Gravitational tidal forces may induce polarization of D0 branes, in analogy to the same effects arising in the context of constant background gauge fields. Such phenomena can teach us about the correspondence between smooth curved spacetime and its underlying non-commutative structure. However, unlike polarization by gauge fields, the gravitational counterpart involves concerns regarding the classical stability of the corresponding polarized states. In this work, we study this issue with respect to the solutions presented in hep-th/0010237 and find that they are classically unstable. The instability however appears with intricate features with all but a few decay channels being lifted. Through a detailed analysis, we then argue that these polarized states may be expected to be long-lived in a regime where the string coupling is small and the number of D0 branes is large.