Related papers: On the Secular Behavior of Irregular Satellites
We identify a new mechanism that can lead to the destruction of small, close-in planetary satellites. If a small moon close to the planet has a sizable eccentricity and inclination, its ejecta that escape to planetocentric orbit would often…
Motivated by the diversity of circumstellar planets in binary stars and the strong effects of the secular resonances of Jupiter and Saturn on the formation and architecture of the inner solar system, we have launched an expansive project on…
We present simulations of Triton's post-capture orbit that confirm the importance of Kozai-type oscillations in its orbital elements. In the context of the tidal orbital evolution model, these variations require average pericenter distances…
The significant orbital eccentricities of most giant extrasolar planets may have their origin in the gravitational dynamics of initially unstable multiple planet systems. In this work, we explore the dynamics of two close planets on…
We develop a fourth-order numerical integrator to simulate the coupled spin and orbital motions of two rigid bodies having arbitrary mass distributions under the influence of their mutual gravitational potential. We simulate the dynamics of…
Circumstellar dust particles can be captured in a mean motion resonance with a planet and simultaneously be affected by non-gravitational effects. It is possible to describe the secular variations of a particle orbit in the mean motion…
Some of the satellites in the Solar System, including the Moon, appear to have been captured from heliocentric orbits at some point in their past, and then have evolved to the present configurations. The exact process of how this trapping…
Disks of bodies orbiting a much more massive central object are extremely common in astrophysics. When the orbits comprising such disks are eccentric, we show they are susceptible to a new dynamical instability. Gravitational forces between…
Spiral waves in active media react to small perturbations as particle-like objects. Here we apply the asymptotic theory to the interaction of spiral waves with a localized inhomogeneity, which leads to a novel prediction: drift of the…
Three-body interactions are ubiquitous in astrophysics. For instance, Kozai-Lidov oscillations in hierarchical triple systems have been studied extensively and applied to a wide range of astrophysical systems. However, mildly-hierarchical…
The merits of a perturbation theory based on a mean to osculating transformation that is pure periodic in the fast angle are investigated. The exact separation of the purely short-period effects of the perturbed Keplerian dynamics from the…
We investigate the angular and kinematic distributions of satellite galaxies around a large sample of bright isolated primaries in the spectroscopic and photometric catalogues of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We detect significant…
We derive the conservative secular evolution of precessing compact binaries to second post-Newtonian order accuracy, with leading-order spin-orbit, spin-spin and mass quadrupole-monopole contributions included. The emerging closed system of…
The orbits of some warm Jupiters are highly inclined (20$^\circ$-50$^\circ$) to those of their exterior companions. Comparable misalignments are inferred between the outer and inner portions of some transition discs. These large…
Planets have been observed in tight binary systems with separations less than 20 AU. A likely formation scenario for such systems involves a dynamical capture, after which high relative inclinations are likely and may lead to Kozai…
In nominal mission scenarios, geostationary satellites perform end-of-life orbit maneuvers to reach suitable disposal orbits, where they do not interfere with operational satellites. This research investigates the long-term orbit evolution…
The spectrum of higher harmonics in atoms calculated with a uniformized semiclassical propagator is presented and it is shown that higher harmonic generation is an interference phenomenon which can be described semiclassically. This can be…
We provide a set of numerical N-body simulations for studying the formation of the outer Milky Ways's stellar halo through accretion events. After simulating minor mergers of prograde and retrograde orbiting satellite halo with a Dark…
Disks of low-mass bodies on high-eccentricity orbits in near-Keplerian potentials can be dynamically unstable to buckling out of the plane. In this letter, we present $N$-body simulations of the long-term behavior of such a system, finding…
Multiple analytical and empirical stability criteria have been derived in the literature for two planet systems. But, the dependence of the stability limit on the initial mutual inclination between the inner and outer orbits is not well…