Gravitational radiation from a rotating collapsing gaseous ellipsoid

The collapse of a uniformly rotating, spatially homogeneous axisymmetric spheroid with an internal gaseous pressure is followed numerically. Energy dissipation by gravitational radiation (GR) is calculated in the weak-field limit, while the nonzero internal temperature allows us to parametrize a ''thermal'' energy loss D/sub γ/ as kapparhoE/sub INT/ (where rho is the uniform density, E/sub INT/ the internal energy, and kappa a free parameter) in a crude attempt to model photon and neutrino losses. The amount of GR energy radiated and the details of the collapsing process of a 1.4 M/sub sun/ white dwarf with initial density of 109 g cm-3 depend not only on the initial eccentricity, central temperature, and total angular momentum, but also strongly on D/sub γ/. While the total GR energy available lies in the range of 1044--1050 ergs, the non-GR component can be much larger resulting in a damping ou of the collapse bounces when kappa is large. In general, the total GR energy from all the bounces is of the same order as that in all the preceding free-falls. However, the last free-fall may contribute from a negligible to a significant portion of the total GR energy emitted