English

On the non-dissipative tidal evolution of the misalignment between spin and orbital angular momenta

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2023-09-13 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We extend our previous work on the evolution of close binary systems with misaligned orbital and spin angular momenta resulting from non-dissipative tidal interaction to include all physical effects contributing to apsidal motion. In addition to tidal distortion of the primary by the compact secondary these include relativistic Einstein precession and the rotational distortion of the primary. The influence of the precession of the line of nodes is included. The dependence of the tidal torque on the apsidal angle ϖ^\hat\varpi couples the apsidal motion to the rate of evolution of the misalignment angle β\beta which is found to oscillate. We provide analytical estimates for the oscillation amplitude Δβ\Delta\beta over a wide range of parameter space confirmed by numerical integrations. This is found to be more significant near critical curves on which dϖ^/dt=0d{\hat \varpi } /dt=0 for a specified β\beta. We find that to obtain 0.1<Δβ<1,0.1 < \Delta\beta < \sim 1, the mass ratio, q>1q > \sim1 the initial eccentricity should be modest, cosβ<1/5,\cos \beta < 1/\sqrt{5}, with cosβ<0\cos\beta <0 corresponding to retrograde rotation, initially, and the primary rotation rate should be sufficiently large. The extended discussion of apsidal motion and its coupled evolution to the misalignment angle given here has potential applications to close binaries with anomalous apsidal motion as well as transiting exoplanets such as warm Jupiters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.06334,
  title  = {On the non-dissipative tidal evolution of the misalignment between spin and orbital angular momenta},
  author = {P. B. Ivanov and J. C. B. Papaloizou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.06334},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

to be published in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:19:22.701Z