Shell sources as a probe of relativistic effects in neutron star models - art. no. 044032

A perturbing shell is introduced as a device for studying the excitation of fluid motions in relativistic stellar models. We show that this approach a llows a reasonably clean separation of radiation from the shell and from fl uid motions in the star, and provides broad flexibility in the location and time scale of perturbations driving the fluid motions. With this model we compare the relativistic and Newtonian results for the generation of even p arity gravitational waves from constant density models. Our results suggest that relativistic effects will not be important in computations of the gra vitational emission except possibly in the case of excitation of the neutro n star on very short time scales.