On secular stability of rapidly rotating stars of arbitrary structure

The aim of the present paper will be to utilize Poincaré's criteria to investigate secular stability of self-gravitating configurations, of arbitrary structure, in the state of rapid rotation. The potential energy, a knowledge of which is necessary for application of these criteria, will be determined by an extension of Clairaut's method; and its evaluation in terms of suitably chosen generalized coordinates carried out explicitly to quantities of fourth order in superficial oblateness, for configurations of arbitrary internal structure.The method employed can, moreover, clearly be extended to attain accuracy of any order — at the expense of mere manipulative work which lends itself to machine automation; and the angular velocity of axial rotation can be an arbitrary function of position as well as of the time. An application of our results to homogeneous configurations in rigig-body rotation will be undertaken to demonstrate that our method, when applied to a case for which a closed solution exists, leads to results which are consistent with it.