title: String splitting and strong coupling meson decay.
abstract: We study the decay of high spin mesons using the gauge-string theory correspondence. The rate of the process is calculated by studying the splitting of a macroscopic string intersecting a D-brane. The result is applied to the decay of mesons in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory with a small number of flavors and in a gravity dual of large N QCD. In QCD the decay of high spin mesons is found to be heavily suppressed in the regime of validity of the supergravity description.
authors.affiliation: Departament Estructura i Constituents de la Materia, Universitat de Barcelona and IFAE, Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Cotrone
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Martucci
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Troost