English

Physical Basis for a Constant Lag Time

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2012-10-15 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We show that the constant time lag prescription for tidal dissipation follows directly from the equations of motion of a tidally-forced viscous fluid body, given some basic assumptions. They are (i) dissipation results from a viscous force that is proportional to the velocity of the tidal flow (ii) tidal forcing and dissipation are weak and non-resonant (iii) the equilibrium structure of the forced body is spherically-symmetric. The lag time is an intrinsic property of the tidally-forced body and is independent of the orbital configuration.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.5723,
  title  = {Physical Basis for a Constant Lag Time},
  author = {Aristotle Socrates and Boaz Katz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.5723},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

4 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:11:04.092Z