MEMBRANE SCATTERING IN CURVED SPACE WITH M-MOMENTUM TRANSFER

We study membrane scattering in a curved space with non-zero M-momentu m pit transfer. In the low-energy short-distance region, the membrane dynamics is described by a three-dimensional N = 4 supersymmetric gaug e theory. We study an n-instanton process of the gauge theory, corresp onding to the exchange of n units of p(11), and compare the result wit h the scattering amplitude computed in the low-energy long-distance re gion using supergravity. We find that they behave differently. We show that this result is not in contradiction with the large-N Matrix Theo ry conjecture, by pointing out that cutoff scales of the supergravity and the gauge theory are complementary to each other. (C) 1998 Publish ed by Elsevier Science B.V.