We study the stability of rotating collisionless self-gravitating spherical
systems by using high-resolution N-body experiments on a Connection Machin
e CM-5,
We added rotation to Ossipkov-Merritt (OM) anisotropic spherical systems by
using two methods. The first method conserves the anisotropy of the distri
bution function defined in the OM algorithm. The second method distorts the
systems in velocity-space. We then show that the stability of systems depe
nds both on their anisotropy and on the value of the ratio of the total kin
etic energy to the rotational kinetic energy. We also test the relevance of
the stability parameters introduced by Perez et al, for the case of rotati
ng systems.