On instability of hadronic string with heavy quarks at its ends

The quark mass dependence of the energy spectrum in the Nambu--Goto string with point--like masses (quarks) at its ends is analyzed. To this end, linearized equations of motion and boundary conditions in this model are considered. It is shown that for sufficiently large quark masses, the first excited state in string spectrum may be arbitrary close to the ground state. Obviously this points to infrared instability in the system under consideration. Possible modifications of string model which could remove this drawback are discussed.