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The Roche Problem for Stratified Polytropes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
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Roche (1850) made the first study of the stability of binary systems. The problem he studied, and which now bears his name, is concerned with the stability of a liquid star in a synchronous, circular orbit about a point mass. Roche’s calculations predicted that if the separation between the liquid star and the point mass is S2.5rs’/3, where r is the unperturbed radius of the liquid star and s the ratio of the mass of the point to the mass of the liquid star, then the liquid star would be unstable. This result was generalised to two liquid stars orbiting each other by Darwin (1910, p. 436). Using the tensor virial method Chandrasekhar (1969) has given a uniform analysis of the classical result. The classical results have been extended by Hachisu and Eriguchi (1984a, b) who looked for the onset of instability in polytropes in binary orbits.
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- Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1985
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