Stability of Rigidly Rotating Relativistic Stars with Soft Equations of State against Gravitational Collapse

We study secular stability against a quasi-radial oscillation for rigidly rotating stars with soft equations of state in general relativity. The polytropic equations of state with polytropic index n between 3 and 3.05 are adopted for modeling the rotating stars. The stability is determined in terms of the turning-point method. It is found that (i) for n >∼ 3.04, all the rigidly rotating stars are unstable against the quasiradial oscillation and (ii) for n >∼ 3.01, the nondimensional angular momentum parameter q ≡ cJ/GM 2 (where J , M , G, and c denote the angular momentum, the gravitational mass, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light, respectively) for all marginally stable rotating stars is larger than unity. A semianalytic calculation is also performed, and good agreement with the numerical results is confirmed. The final outcome after axisymmetric gravitational collapse of rigidly rotating and marginally stable massive stars with q > 1 is predicted, assuming that the rest-mass distribution as a function of the specific angular momentum is preserved and that the pressure never halt the collapse. It is found that even for 1 < q <∼ 2.5, a black hole may be formed as a result of the collapse, but for q >∼ 2.5, the significant angular momentum will prevent the direct formation of a black hole. Subject headings: black hole physics – relativity – hydrodynamics – stars: rotation