String tension and glueball mass in a lattice theory of disconnected,selfintersecting random surfaces

We exhibit the analytic structure of a model of disconnected, selfintersecting random surfaces. This model is shown to have features attractive for a Monte Carlo simulation. Previously obtained numerical data show evidence that for a 3-dim embedding space the string tension vanishes above a critical temperature and has a critical exponent between 1 and 2. The glueball mass is shown to be bounded below by the mass-gap of the 3-dim Ising model.On leave of absence from Freie Universität Berlin