%0 Journal Article %T Brane Creation in M(atrix) Theory %A Pei-Ming Ho %A Yong-Shi Wu %J Physics %D 1997 %I arXiv %R 10.1016/S0370-2693(97)01484-6 %X We discuss, in the context of M(atrix) theory, the creation of a membrane suspendend between two longitudinal five-branes when they cross each other. It is shown that the membrane creation is closely related to the degrees of freedom in the off-diagonal blocks which are related via dualities to the chiral fermionic zero mode on a 0-8 string. In the dual system of a D0-brane and a D8-brane in type \IIA theory the half-integral charges associated with the ``half''-strings are found to be connected to the well-known fermion-number fractionalization in the presence of a fermionic zero mode. At sufficiently short distances, the effective potential between the two five-branes is dominated by the zero mode contribution to the vacuum energy. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9708137v3