Hi there! Today: a new post on the rings of Saturn. I will more specifically discuss the F Ring, in presenting you the study A simple model for the location of Saturn’s F ring, by Luis Benet and Àngel Jorba, which has recently been accepted for publication in Icarus.

The F Ring

The F Ring of Saturn is a narrow ring of particles. It orbits close to the Roche limit, which is the limit below which the satellites are not supposed to accrete because the differential gravitational action of Saturn on different parts of it prevents it. This is also the theoretical limit of the existence of the rings.

Its mean distance from the center of Saturn is 140,180 km, and its extent is some hundreds of kilometers. It is composed of a core ring, which width is some 50 km, and some particles which seem to be ejected in spiral strands.

Orbiting nearby are the two satellites Prometheus (inside) and Pandora (outside), which proximity involves strong gravitational perturbations, even if they are small.

The images of the F Ring, and in particular of its structures, are sometimes seen as an example of observed chaos in the Solar System. This motivates many planetary scientists to investigate its dynamics.

Mean-motion resonances in the rings

Imagine a planar configuration, in which we have a big planet (Saturn), a small particle orbiting around (the rings are composed of particles), and a third body which is very large with respect to the particle, but very small with respect to the planet (a satellite). The orbit of the particle is essentially an ellipse (Keplerian motion), but is also perturbed by the gravitational action of the satellite. This usually results in oscillating, periodic variations of its orbital elements, in particular the semimajor axis… except in some specific configurations: the mean motion resonances.

When the orbital periods of the particle and of the satellite are commensurate, i.e. when you can write the ratio of their orbital frequencies as a fraction of integers, then you have part of the gravitational action of the satellite on the particle which accumulates during the orbital history of the two bodies, instead of cancelling out. In such a case, you have a resonant interaction, which usually produces the most interesting effects in planetary systems.

There are resonances among planetary satellites as well, but here I will stick to the rings-satellites interactions, for which a specific formalism has been developed, itself inspired from the galactic dynamics. Actually, 4 angles should be considered, which are

• the mean longitude of the particle λ_p, which locates the particle on its orbit,
• the mean longitude of the satellite λ_s
• the longitude of the pericentre of the particle ϖ_p, which locates the point of the orbit which is the closest to Saturn,

and

• the longitude of the pericentre of the satellite ϖ_s.

The situation is a little more complicated when the orbits are not planar, please allow me to dismiss that question for this post.

You have a mean-motion resonance when you can write <pλ_p-(p+q)λ_s+q₁ϖ_p+q₂ϖ_s>=0, <> meaning on average. p, q, q₁ and q₂ are integer coefficients verifying q₁+q₂=q. The sum of the integer coefficients present in the resonant argument is null. This rule is sometimes called d’Alembert rule, and is justified by the fact that you do not change the physics of a system if you change the reference frame in which you describe it. The only way to preserve the resonant argument from a rotation of an angle α and axis z is that the sum of the coefficients is null.

It can be shown that the strongest resonances happen with |q|=1, meaning either |q₁|=1 and q₂=0, or
|q₂|=1 and q₁=0.

In the first case, pλ_p-(p+1)λ_s+ϖ_p is the argument of a Lindblad resonance, which pumps the eccentricity of the particle, while pλ_p-(p+1)λ_s+ϖ_s is a corotation resonance, which is doped by the eccentricity of the satellite. Here I supposed a positive q, which means that the orbit of the satellite is exterior to the one of the particle. This is the case for the configurations F Ring – Pandora and F Ring – Titan. However, when the satellite is interior to the particle, like in the configuration F Ring Prometheus, then the argument of the Lindblad resonance should read pλ_s-(p+1)λ_p+ϖ_p, and the one of the corotation resonance is pλ_s-(p+1)λ_p+ϖ_s.

As I said, these resonances have cumulative effects on the orbits. This means that we could expect that something happens, this something being possibly anything: a Lindblad resonance should pump the eccentricity of a particle and favor its ejection, but this also means that particle which would orbit nearby without being affected by the resonance would be more stable… chaotic effects might happen, which would be favored by the accumulation of resonances, the consideration of higher-order ones, the presence of several perturbers… This is basically what is observed in the F Ring.

The method: numerical integrations

The authors address this problem in running intensive numerical simulations of the behavior of the particles under the gravitational action of Saturn and some satellites. Let me specify that, usually, the rings are seen as clouds of interacting particles. They interact in colliding. In that specific study, the collisions are neglected. This allows the authors to simulate the trajectory of any individual particle, considered as independent of the other ones.

They considered that the particles are perturbed by the oblateness of Saturn expanded until the order 2 (actually this has been measured with a good accuracy until the order 6), Prometheus, Pandora, and Titan. Why these bodies? Because they wanted to consider the most significant ones on the dynamics of the F Ring. When you model so many particles (2.5 millions) over such a long time span (10,000 years), you are limited by the computation time. A way to reduce it is to remove negligible effects. Prometheus and Pandora are the two closest ones and Titan the largest one. The authors have detected that Titan slightly shifts the location of the resonances. However, they admit that they did not test the influence of Mimas, which is the closest of the mid-sized satellites, and which is known for having a strong influence on the main rings.

A critical point when you run numerical integrations, especially over long durations, is the accuracy, because you do not want to propagate errors. The authors use a symplectic scheme, based on a Hamiltonian formulation, i.e. on the conservation of the total energy, which can be expanded up to the order 28. The conservation of the total energy makes sense as long as the dissipation is neglected, which is the case here. The internal accuracy of the integrator was set to 10^-21, which translated into a relative error on the angular momentum of Titan below 2.10^-14 throughout the whole integration.

Measuring the stability

It might be tough to determine from a numerical integration whether a particle has a stable orbit or not. If you simulate its ejection, then you know, but if you do not see its ejection, you have to decide from the simulated trajectory whether the particle will be ejected one day or not, and possibly when.
For this, two kinds of indicator exists in the literature. The first kind addresses the chaos, or most specifically the hyperbolicity of the trajectory, while the second one addresses the variability of the fundamental frequencies of the system. From a rigorous mathematical point of view, these two notions are different. Anyway, the ensuing indicators are convenient ways to characterize non-periodic trajectories, and their use are commonly accepted as indicators of stability.
A hyperbolic point is an unstable equilibrium. For instance a rigid pendulum has a stable equilibrium down (when you perturb it, it will return down), but an unstable one up (it stays up until you perturb it). The up position is hyperbolic, while the down one is elliptic. The hyperbolicity of a trajectory implies a significant dependency on the initial conditions of the system: a slightly different initial position or different initial velocity will give you a very different trajectory. In systems having some complexity, this strongly suggests a chaotic behavior. The hyperbolicity can be measured with Lyapunov exponents. Different definitions of these exponents exist in the literature, but the idea is to measure the evolution of the norm of the vector which is tangent to the trajectory. Is this norm has an exponential growth, then you strongly depend on the initial conditions, i.e. you are hyperbolic, i.e. you are likely chaotic. Some indicators of stability are thus based on the evolution of the tangent vector.
The other way to estimate the stability is to focus on the fundamental frequencies of the trajectory. Each of the two angles which characterize the trajectory of the particle, i.e. its mean longitude λ_p and the longitude of its pericentre ϖ_p can be associated with a frequency of the problem. It is actually a little more complicated than just a time derivative of the relevant angle, because in that case you would have a contribution of the dynamics of the satellite. A more proper determination is made with a frequency analysis of the orbital elements, kind of Fourier. You are very stable when these frequencies do not drift with time. Here, the authors used first the relative variations of the orbital frequency as indicator of the stability. The most stable particles are the ones which present the smallest relative variations. In order to speed up the calculations, they also used the variations of the semimajor axis as an indicator, and considered that a particle was stable when the variations were smaller than 1.5 km.

Results

A study of stability necessarily focuses on the core of the rings, because the spiral strands are supposed to be doomed. And the authors get very confined zones of stability. A comparison between these zones of stability shows that several mean-motion resonances with Prometheus, Pandora and Titan are associated with them. This could be seen as consistent with the global aspect of the F Ring, but neither with the measured width of the core ring, nor with its exact location.

This problem emphasizes the difficulty to get accurate results with such a complex system. The study manages, with a simplified system of an oblate Saturn and 3 satellites, to render the qualitative dynamics of the F Ring, but this is not accurate enough to predict the future of the observed structures.

Some links

• The study, also made freely available by the authors on arXiv. Thanks to them for sharing!
• The web page of Luis Benet (UNAM, Mexico).
• The web page of Àngel Jorba (University of Barcelona, Spain).

Thanks for having read all this. I wish you a Merry Christmas, and please feel free to share and comment!