ParabolicDensity/GravPot

Parabolic Density Distribution

Part I:   Gravitational Potential

Part II:   Spherical Structures

Part III:   Axisymmetric Equilibrium Structures

Part IV:   Triaxial Equilibrium Structures (Exploration)

Gravitational Potential

Setup

In an accompanying chapter titled, Properties of Homogeneous Ellipsoids (1), we have shown how analytic expressions may be derived for the gravitational potential inside of uniform-density ellipsoids. In that discussion, we largely followed the derivations of [EFE]. In the latter part of the nineteenth-century, 📚 N. M. Ferrers (1877, Quart. J. Pure Appl. Math., Vol. 14, pp. 1 - 22) showed that very similar analytic expressions can be derived for ellipsoids that have certain, specific inhomogeneous mass distributions. Here we specifically discuss the case of configurations that exhibit concentric ellipsoidal iso-density surfaces of the form,

$\rho$

=

${\rho }_c[1-(\frac{x^2}{a_1^2}+\frac{y^2}{a_2^2}+\frac{z^2}{a_3^2}\left)\right],$

that is, configurations with parabolic density distributions. Much of our presentation, here, is drawn from our separate, detailed description of what we will refer to as Ferrers potential.

We begin by reminding the reader that, for a uniform-density configuration, the "interior" potential will be given by the expression,

${\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\mathrm{g}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{v}}(\mathbf{𝐱})$

=

$-\pi G{\rho }_c[I_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{T}}{a}_1^2-(A_1{x}^2+A_2{y}^2+A_3{z}^2\left)\right].$

As can readily be demonstrated, this scalar potential satisfies the differential form of the

Poisson Equation

${\mathrm{\nabla }}^2\mathrm{\Phi }=4\pi G\rho$

See Also