English

Spin-orbit coupling for close-in planets

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2021-12-30 v1 Dynamical Systems

Abstract

We study the spin evolution of close-in planets in multi-body systems and present a very general formulation of the spin-orbit problem. This includes a simple way to probe the spin dynamics from the orbital perturbations, a new method for computing forced librations and tidal deformation, and general expressions for the tidal torque and capture probabilities in resonance. We show that planet-planet perturbations can drive the spin of Earth-size planets into asynchronous or chaotic states, even for nearly circular orbits. We apply our results to Mercury and to the KOI-1599 system of two super-Earths in a 3/2 mean motion resonance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.14335,
  title  = {Spin-orbit coupling for close-in planets},
  author = {Alexandre C. M. Correia and Jean-Baptiste Delisle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.14335},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

12 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:34:09.036Z