RESPONSE OF A STAR TO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVES

We investigate the possibility of the excitation of the oscillation mo des of polytropic stars by gravitational waves. We decompose the displ acement vector field of a normal mode into its irrotational and soleno idal components and show that the interaction with the gravitational w aves takes place through the irrotational component. We calculate the absorption cross section of the waves for different modes and find tha t the cross section fur ti modes cue orders of magnitudes larger than the g modes. Tn the p sequence the cross section is largest for the fu ndamental mode and decreases with increasing mode order.