Tag Archives: Kozai-Lidov

Asteroids: Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects

How the Planet Nine would affect the furthest asteroids

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Hi there! You have heard of the hypothetical Planet Nine, which could be the explanation for an observed clustering of the pericentres of the furthest asteroids, known as eTNOS for extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects. I present you today a theoretical study investigating in-depth this mechanism, in being focused on the influence of the inclination of this Planet Nine. I present you Non-resonant secular dynamics of trans-Neptunian objects perturbed by a distant super-Earth by Melaine Saillenfest, Marc Fouchard, Giacomo Tommei and Giovanni B. Valsecchi. This study has recently been accepted for publication in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.

Outline

Is there a Planet Nine?
The secular dynamics of an asteroid
The Kozai-Lidov mechanism
Methodology
Results
To know more…

Is there a Planet Nine?

An still undiscovered Solar System planet has always been dreamed, and sometimes even hinted. We called it Tyche, Thelisto, Planet X (“X” for mystery, unknown, but also for 10, Pluto having been the ninth planet until 2006). Since 2015, this quest has been renewed after the observation of clustering in the pericentres of extreme TNOS. Further investigations concluded that at least 5 observed dynamical features of the Solar System could be explained by an additional planet, now called Planet Nine:

  1. the clustering of the pericentres of the eTNOs,
  2. the significant presence of retrograde orbits among the TNOs,
  3. the 6° obliquity of the Sun,
  4. the presence of highly inclined Centaurs,
  5. the dynamical detachment of the pericentres of TNOs from Neptune.

The combination of all of these elements tends to rule out a random process. It appears that this Planet Nine would be pretty like Neptune, i.e. 10 times heavier than our Earth, that its pericentre would be at 200 AU (while Neptune is at 30 AU only!), and its apocentre between 500 AU and 1200 AU. This would indeed be a very distant object, which would orbit the Sun in several thousands of years!

Astronomers (Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown) are currently trying to detect this Planet Nine, unsuccessfully up to now. You can follow their blog here, from which I took some inspiration. The study I present today investigates the secular dynamics that this Planet Nine would induce.

The secular dynamics of an asteroid

The secular dynamics is the one involving the pericentre and the ascending node of an object, without involving its longitude. To make things clear, you know that a planetary object orbiting the Sun wanders on an eccentric, inclined orbit, which is an ellipse. When you are interested in the secular dynamics, you care of the orientation of this ellipse, but not of where the object is on this ellipse. The clustering of pericentres of eTNOs is a feature of the secular dynamics.

This is a different aspect from the dynamics due to mean-motion resonances, in which you are interested in objects, which orbital periods around the Sun are commensurate with the one of the Planet Nine. Some studies address this issue, since many small objects are in mean-motion resonance with a planet. Not this study.

The Kozai-Lidov mechanism

A notable secular effect is the Kozai-Lidov resonance. Discovered in 1961 by Michael Lidov in USSR and Yoshihide Kozai in Japan, this mechanism says that there exists a dynamical equilibrium at high inclination (63°) for eccentric orbits, in the presence of a perturber. So, you have the central body (the Sun), a perturber (the planet), and your asteroid, which could have its inclination pushed by this effect. This induces a libration of the orientation of its orbit, i.e. the difference between its pericentre and its ascending node would librate around 90° or 270°.

This process is even more interesting when the perturber has a significant eccentricity, since the so-called eccentric Kozai-Lidov mechanism generates retrograde orbits, i.e. orbits with an inclination larger than 90°. At 117°, you have another equilibrium.

Now, when you observe a small body which dynamics suggests to be affected by Kozai-Lidov, this means you should have a perturber… you see what I mean?

Of course, this perturber can be Neptune, but only sometimes. Other times, the dynamics would rather be explained by an outer perturber… which could be the Planet Nine, or a passing star (who knows?)

Methodology

Before mentioning the results of this study I must briefly mention the methodology. The authors made what I would call a semi-analytical study, i.e. they manipulated equations, but with the assistance of a computer. They wrote down the Hamiltonian of the restricted 3-body problem, i.e. the expression of the whole energy of the problem with respect to the orbital elements of the perturber and the TNO. This energy should be constant, since no dissipation is involved, and the way this Hamiltonian is written has convenient mathematical properties, which allow to derive the whole dynamics. Then this Hamiltonian is averaged over the mean longitudes, since we are not interested in them, we want only the secular dynamics.

A common way to do this is to expand the Hamiltonian following small parameters, i.e. the eccentricity, the inclination… But not here! You cannot do this since the eccentricity of the Planet Nine (0.6) and its inclination are not supposed to be small. So, the authors average the Hamiltonian numerically. This permits them to keep the whole secular dynamics due to the eccentricity and the inclination.

Once they did this, they looked for equilibriums, which would be preferential dynamical states for the TNOs. They also detected chaotic zones in the phase space, i.e. ranges of orbital elements, for which the trajectory of the TNOs would be difficult to predict, and thus potentially unstable. They detected these zones in plotting so-called Poincaré sections, which give a picture of the trajectories in a two-dimensional plane that reduces the number of degrees-of-freedom.

Results

And the authors find that the two Kozai-Lidov mechanisms, i.e. the one due to Neptune, and the one due to the Planet Nine, conflict for a semimajor axis larger than 150 AU, where orbital flips become possible. The equilibriums due to Neptune would disappear beyond 200 AU, being submerged by chaos. However, other equilibriums appear.

For the future, I see two ways to better constrain the Planet Nine:

  1. observe it,
  2. discover more eTNOs, which would provide more accurate constraints.

Will Gaia be useful for that? Anyway, this is a very exciting quest. My advice: stay tuned!

To know more…

That’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Asteroids: Centaurs

On the dynamics of small bodies beyond Neptune

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Hi there! Today I will present you a study on the possible dynamics of some Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). This study, Study and application of the resonant secular dynamics beyond Neptune by M. Saillenfest, M. Fouchard, G. Tommei and G.B. Valsecchi, has recently been accepted for publication in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.
This is a theoretical study, which presents some features of the dynamics that could one day be observed. This manuscript follows another one by the same authors, in which a theory of the “resonant secular dynamics” is presented. Here it is applied to small bodies, which are thought to be in mean-motion resonances with Neptune. This study results from a French-Italian collaboration.

The Kozai-Lidov mechanism

The dynamics that is presented here uses the so-called Kozai-Lidov mechanism. This is a mechanism which has been simultaneously and independently discovered in Russia (by Lidov) and in Japan (by Kozai), and which considers the following configuration: a massive central body, another massive one called the perturber, and a test-particle, i.e. a massless body, which orbits the central one. This problem is called the Restricted 3-body problem. Originally, the central body was the Earth, the perturber the Moon, and the test-particle an artificial satellite of the Earth. In such a case, the orbit of the test-particle is an ellipse, which is perturbed by the perturber; this results in variation of the elliptical elements, i.e. eccentricity, inclination… moreover, the orientation of the ellipse is moving…

To describe the problem, I need to introduce the following orbital elements:

  • The semimajor axis a, which is half the long axis of the orbit,
  • the mean anomaly M, which locates the satellite on the ellipse,
  • the eccentricity e, which is positive and smaller than 1. It tells us how eccentric the orbit is (e=0 means that the orbit is circular),
  • the pericentre ω, which is the point of the orbit which is the closest to the central body (undefined if the orbit is circular),
  • the inclination I, which is the angle between the orbital plane and the reference plane,
  • the ascending node Ω, which locates the intersection between the orbital plane and the reference plane.

The Kozai-Lidov mechanism allows a confinement of the pericentre with respect to the ascending node, and it can be shown that it results in a raise of the eccentricity of the inclination. Exploiting such a mechanism gives frozen orbits, i.e. configurations for which the orbit of an artificial orbiter, even inclined and eccentric, will keep the same spatial orientation.

These recent years, this mechanism has been extended for designing space missions around other objects than the Earth, but also to explain the dynamics of some exoplanetary systems, of small distant satellites of the giant planets, and of Trans-Neptunian Objects, as it is the case here. In this last problem, the central body is the Sun, the perturber is a giant planet (more specifically here, it is Neptune), and the test-particle is a TNO, with the hope to explain the inclined and eccentric orbit of some of them. A notable difference with the original Kozai-Lidov problem is that here, the test-particle orbits exterior to the perturber. Another difference is that its dynamics is also resonant.

Resonant and secular dynamics

The authors do not speak of resonant secular dynamics, but of dynamics that is both resonant and secular. The difference is that the involved resonance is not a secular one. Let me explain.

The authors consider that the TNO is in a mean-motion resonance with Neptune. This implies an integer commensurability between its orbital period around the Sun and the one of Neptune, with results in large variations of its semi-major axis. If we look at the orbital elements, this affects the mean anomaly M, while, when a resonance is secular, M is not affected.

So, these objects are in a mean-motion resonance with Neptune. Moreover, they have an interested secular dynamics. By secular, I mean that the mean anomaly is not affected, but something interesting involves the node and/or the pericentre. And this is where comes Kozai-Lidov. The paper studies the objects which are trapped into a mean-motion resonance with Neptune, and which are likely to present a confinement of the pericentre ω, which could explain a significant eccentricity and a high inclination.

For that, they make an analytical study, which theory had been developed in the first paper, and which is applied here.

Why an analytical study?

The modern computing facilities allow to simulate the motion of millions of test-particles over the age of the Solar System, in considering the gravitational interaction of the planets, the galactic tide, a star passing by… and this results in clusters of populations of fictitious TNOs. Very well. But when you do that, you do not know why this particular object behaves like that. However, an analytical study will give you zones of stability for the orbits, which are preferred final states. It will tell you: there will probably be some objects in this state, BECAUSE… and in the case of this study, the because has something to do with the Kozai-Lidov mechanism. Moreover, the because also gives you some confidence in your results, since you have an explanation why you get what you get.

To make things short, a numerical study shows you many things, while an analytical one proves you a few things. A comprehensive study of the problem requires combining the two approaches.

This paper

This paper specifically deals with fictitious objects, which are in mean-motion with Neptune, and are likely to be affected by the Kozai-Lidov mechanism. After many calculations presented in the first paper, the authors show that the problem can be reduced to one degree of freedom, in a Hamiltonian formalism.

The Hamiltonian formalism is a common and widely used way to treat problems of celestial mechanics. It consists in expressing the total energy of the problem, i.e. kinetic + potential energy, and transform it so that trajectories can be described. These trajectories conserve the total energy, which may seem weird for a physical problem. Actually there is some dissipation in the dynamics of TNOs, but so small that it can be neglected in many problems. The most recent numerical studies in this topic consider the migration of the planets, which is not a conservative process. In the paper I present you today, this migration is not considered. This is one of the approximations required by the analytical study.

The remaining degree of freedom is the one relevant to the Kozai-Lidov mechanism. The one associated with the mean-motion resonance is considered to be constant. For that it involves the area enshrouded by the libration of the resonant argument, which is constant (hypothesis of the adiabatic invariant). So, the authors get a one degree-of-freedom Hamiltonian, for which they draw phase spaces, showing the trajectory in the plane q vs. ω, q=a(1-e) being the distance between the Sun and the pericentre of the TNO, i.e. its closest distance to the Sun. These phase portraits depend on other parameters, like the mean-motion resonance with Neptune that is considered, and a parameter η, which combines the inclination and the eccentricity.

The results are a catalog of possible trajectories, some of them presenting a confinement of the pericentre ω. For a large cloud of objects, this would result in an accumulation of pericentres in a constrained zone. The authors try to find confirmation of their results with existing objects, but their limited number and the inaccuracy on their location make this comparison inconclusive. They also point out that the orbits of Sedna and 2012VP113 cannot be explained by this mechanism.

Perspectives

The future observations of TNOs will give us access to more objects and more accurate trajectories, and it is to be hoped that some of them will fit into the trajectories found by the authors. That would be a great success for that, and that would be deserved regarding the effort necessary to achieve such an analytical study.

As I said, such a problem needs analytical and numerical studies, but some of the authors (Marc Fouchard and Giovanni Valsecchi) are also involved in such a numerical exploration, which starts from a fictitious Oort cloud and simulates the excitation of the eccentricity and inclination of some of the objects.

For the two studies to meet, it should also be investigated how the planetary migration, which results from models of formation and evolution of the Solar System, affects the zones of stability due to the Kozai-Lidov mechanism.

Finally, we should not forget the quest for the Planet Nine. As the authors honestly point out, an additional planet could break down some of the conclusions.

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Feel interested? Please leave a comment!