Stringy Membranes in AdS/CFT

We study membrane configurations in AdS_{7/4}xS^{4/7}. The membranes are wrapped around the compact manifold S^{4/7} and are dynamically equivalent to bosonic strings in AdS_5. We thus conveniently identify them as "stringy membranes". For the case of AdS_7xS^4, their construction is carried out by embedding the Polyakov action for classical bosonic strings in AdS_5, into the corresponding membrane action. Therefore, every string configuration in AdS_5 can be realized by an appropriately chosen stringy membrane in AdS_7xS^4. We discuss the possibility of this being also the case for stringy membranes in AdS_4xS^7/Z^k (k > 1 or k = 1). By performing a stability analysis to the constructed solutions, we find that the (membrane) fluctuations along their transverse directions are organized in multiple Lam\'{e} stability bands and gaps in the space of parameters of the configurations. In this membrane picture, strings exhibit a single band/gap structure. Since the spectrum of quadratic fluctuations is important for the quantization of membranes, our analysis suggests the idea that quantum membranes behave as collective excitations of a multitude of interacting quantum strings.