Are giant micelles living polymers?

We report the first self-diffusion measurements of elongated micelles in the semidilute regime performed with fringe-pattern photobleaching-recovery techniques. These measurements give evidence for the power-law dependence of the self-diffusion coefficient ${\mathrm{D}}_{\mathrm{s}}$ versus concentration, but polymer models are not adequate. Suggestion is made that such micellar systems behave like ‘‘living polymers.’’