Related papers: Chaotic Diffusion of Resonant Kuiper Belt Objects
Cold Neptunes and sub-Neptunes are among the most common products of planet formation and likely dominate the angular-momentum budgets in most planetary systems, yet their dynamical impact on planetary architectures remains poorly…
The orbital period ratios of neighbouring sub-Neptunes are distributed asymmetrically near first-order resonances. There are deficits of systems---"troughs" in the period ratio histogram---just short of commensurability, and…
Based on radial velocity measurements it has been found recently that the two giant planets detected around the star HD 73526 are in 2:1 resonance. However, as our numerical integration shows, the derived orbital data for this system result…
We investigate the resonant rotation of circumbinary bodies in planar quasi-circular orbits. Denoting $n_b$ and $n$ the orbital mean motion of the inner binary and of the circumbinary body, respectively, we show that spin-orbit resonances…
Dissipationless N-body models of rotating galaxies, iso-energetic to a non-rotating model, are examined as regards the mass in regular and in chaotic motion. The values of their spin parameters $\lambda$ are near the value $\lambda=0.22$ of…
Observations indicate that some of the largest Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have retained volatiles in the gas phase, which implies the presence of an atmosphere that can affect their reflectance spectra and thermal balance. Volatile escape…
Recent observations have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper-belt. The discovered binaries have four characteristics they comprise a few percent of the TNOs, the…
This work investigates efficient routes to turbulence in quasi-two-dimensional shear flows. Two-dimensional disturbances require high Reynolds numbers to incite transition from a steady base flow, as transient growth is modest. With the…
On long enough timescales, chaotic diffusion has the potential to significantly alter the appearance of a dynamical system. The solar system is no exception: diffusive processes take part in the transportation of small bodies and provide…
(Abridged) The orbits of the recently discovered satellites of Pluto, S/2005 P2 and S/2005 P1, are significantly non-Keplerian, even if P2 and P1 have negligible masses, because the mass ratio of Charon-Pluto is ~0.1. We present an analytic…
The dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt can be used as a clue to the formation and evolution of the Solar System, planetary systems in general, and Neptune's early orbital history in particular. The problem is best addressed by forward…
The classical Kuiper belt contains objects both from a low-inclination, presumably primordial, distribution and from a high-inclination dynamically excited population. Based on a sample of classical TNOs with observations at thermal…
The ring system and small satellites of Neptune were discovered during Voyager 2 flyby in 1989 (Smith et al.1989). In this work we analyse the diffusion maps which can give an overview of the system. As a result we found the width of…
High resolution simulations are used to map out the detailed structure of two long-lived stable belts of asteroid orbits in the inner Solar system. The Vulcanoid belt extends from 0.09 to 0.20 astronomical units (au), though with a gaps at…
We present a numerical study on the stability of the 1/2, 2/1 and 1/1 retrograde mean motion resonances in the 3-body problem composed of a solar mass star, a Jupiter mass planet and an additional body with zero mass (elliptic restricted…
The orbits of Pluto's four small satellites (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) are nearly circular and coplanar with the orbit of the large satellite Charon, with orbital periods nearly in the ratios 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, and 6:1 with Charon's…
The observation that the orbits of long-period Kuiper Belt objects are anomalously clustered in physical space has recently prompted the Planet Nine hypothesis - the proposed existence of a distant and eccentric planetary member of our…
The long-term evolution of the outer Solar System is subject to the influence of the giant planets, however, perturbations from other massive bodies located in the region imprint secular signatures, that are discernible in long-term…
Recent observations (Burnes2002,Veillet2002,Margot2002a) have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper Belt. The TNO binaries are strikingly different from asteroid…
The Pluto system provides a unique local laboratory for the study of binaries with multiple low mass companions. In this paper, we study the orbital stability of P4, the most recently discovered moon in the Pluto system. This newfound…