Cracking of general relativistic anisotropic polytropes

We discuss the effect that small fluctuations of the local anisotropy of pressure and of the energy density may have on the occurrence of cracking in spherical compact objects, satisfying a polytropic equation of state. Two different kinds of polytropes are considered. For both, it is shown that departures from equilibrium may lead to the appearance of cracking, for a wide range of values of the parameters defining the polytrope. Prospective applications of the obtained results to some astrophysical scenarios are pointed out.