Moment of inertia of a neutron star. I. Relativistic equation for the accumulated moment of inertia

A relativistic, first-order differential equation is derived for the accumulated moment of inertia of a spherically symmetric celestial body. An approximate equation is proposed to describe the contribution of relativistic effects to the moment of inertia of a superdense star. For configurations of an incompressible fluid, this approximation describes the results of the numerical calculations of Chandrasekhar and Miller to within 5% in the entire range of central pressures from 0 to ∞.