Metastability of spherical membranes in supermembrane and matrix theory

Motivated by recent work we study rotating ellipsoidal membranes in the fra mework of the light-cone supermembrane theory. We investigate stability pro perties of these classical solutions which are important for the quantizati on of super membranes. We find the stability modes for all sectors of small multipole deformations. We exhibit an isomorphism of the linearized membra ne equation with those of the SU(N) matrix model for every value of N. The boundaries of the linearized stability region are at a finite distance and they appear for finite size perturbations.