Gravitational radiation and the stability of rotating stars.
Abstract
It has been noted that all rotating stars are unstable to the radiation of gravitational waves by nonradial stellar modes. However small the rate of stellar rotation, for each set of modes (for example the p-modes) there is always a critical azimuthal wave number, such that modes with higher wave numbers are unstable. A scalar theory of gravitation is used to calculate the growth rate of the instability explicitly in the slow-motion regime. It is found that the instability grows on astronomically interesting time scales only for neutron stars with rotational periods not exceeding a few milliseconds. It is indicated why general relativity is likely to yield the same conclusion. A situation in which an accreting neutron star can radiate a large fraction of the accretion luminosity as gravitational waves is briefly considered.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- August 1978
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/184.3.501
- Bibcode:
- 1978MNRAS.184..501P
- Keywords:
-
- Gravitational Waves;
- Neutron Stars;
- Relativity;
- Rotary Stability;
- Stellar Rotation;
- Angular Momentum;
- Angular Velocity;
- Bessel Functions;
- Legendre Functions;
- Navier-Stokes Equation;
- Pulsars;
- Scalars;
- Wave Equations;
- Wavelengths;
- Astrophysics;
- Gravitational Waves:Neutron Stars;
- Gravitational Waves:Rotating Stars