Finding a mechanism to break supersymmetry in a controllable way is a challenge of major interest in string theory. In the context of flux compactifications, one of the most simple ways to obtain metastable states in string theory is to insert antibranes in a background with brane charge dissolved in fluxes. This mechanism has been used to study metastable vacua of cascading theories, is a crucial mechanism in phenomenological models and provides a tool to construct non-extremal black hole microstates geometries.

In this talk I will investigate the existence of metastable states in a class of bubbling geometries that are dual to the mass deformed M2 brane theory preserving 16 supercharges by probing the background with M5 branes carrying M2 charge. For branes with positive M2 charge we find supersymmetric global minima of the brane potential, corresponding to dielectric brane vacua of the supersymmetric theory. For M5 branes with induced negative M2 brane charge on the worldvolume we find non-supersymmetric metastable configurations, wrapping contractible three-cycles in the geometry. These configurations should correspond to metastable states in the dual theory.