Gravitational Potentials of Triaxial Ellipsoids in Weyl Gravity

Abstract

We present analytic expressions for the gravitational potentials associated with triaxial ellipsoids, spheroids, spheres and disks in Weyl gravity. The gravitational potentials of these configurations in Newtonian gravity, i.e. the potentials derived by integration of the Poisson equation Green's function 1/|r − r′| over the volume of the configuration, are well known in the literature. Herein we present the results of the integration of |r − r′|, the Green's function associated with the fourth order Laplacian ∇⁴ of Weyl gravity, over the volume of the configuration to obtain the resulting gravitational potentials within this specific theory. As an application of our calculations, we solve analytically Euler's equations pertaining to incompressible rotating fluids to show that, as in the case of Newtonian gravity, homogeneous prolate configurations are not allowed within Weyl gravity either.