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Published December 1995 | public
Journal Article

Single-Sided Shepherding

Abstract

Narrow ringlets are observed to form at isolated Lindblad resonances in recent simulations (J. Hänninen and H. Salo, Icarus 108, 325-346 (1994) and 117, 435-438 (1995)). Our remarks are directed toward the interpretation of this phenomenon. Ringlet formation is a consequence of the negative angular momentum luminosity promoted by satellite perturbations of the streamlines of particle flow. Contraction halts once the surface density reaches a value such that the angular momentum luminosity vanishes. Our estimate for the formation time, t_f ∼ (M_p/M_s)^1/2Ω,^(-1), for low order resonances in optically thin rings is consistent with the results of the simulations. Ringlets drift across the width of resonance, W ∼ (M_s/M_p)^(1/2)ɑ, as a result of the unbalanced satellite torque. This occurs on the much longer timescale t_d ∼ (M_p/M_s)Ω^(-1) and cannot be observed in current simulations.

Additional Information

© 1995 Academic Press. Received July 10, 1995, revised September 6, 1995. This research was supported by grants from NSF and NASA. An extended visit by BS to the California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory was partly supported by the French Programme National de Planétologie. The authors thank Dr. Ignacio Mosqueira for suggestions that led to an improvement of the manuscript.

Additional details

Created:
September 14, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023