Simulations of dense planetary rings. IV. Spinning self-gravitating particles with size distribution

Details Simulations of dense planetary rings. IV. Spinning self-gravitating particles with size distribution Simulations of dense planetary rings. IV. Spinning self-gravitating particles with size distribution

Mar 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006icar..181..272m&link_type=abstract

Icarus, Volume 181, Issue 1, p. 272-291.

Physics

15

Scientific paper

Previous self-gravitating simulations of dense planetary rings are extended to include particle spins. Both identical particles as well as systems with a modest range of particle sizes are examined. For a ring of identical particles, we find that mutual impact velocity is always close to the escape velocity of the particles, even if the total rms velocity dispersion of the system is much larger, due to collective motions associated to wakes induced by near-gravitational instability or by viscous overstability. As a result, the spin velocity (i.e., the product of the particle radius and the spin frequency) maintained by mutual impacts is also of the order of the escape velocity, provided that friction is significant. For the size distribution case, smaller particles have larger impact velocities and thus larger spin velocities, particularly in optically thick rings, since small particles move rather freely between wakes. Nevertheless, the maximum ratio of spin velocities between the smallest and largest particles, as well as the ratio for translational velocities, stays below about 5 regardless of the width of the size distribution. Particle spin state is one of the important factors affecting the temperature difference between the lit and unlit face of Saturn's rings. Our results suggest that, to good accuracy, the spin frequency is inversely proportional to the particle size. Therefore, the mixing ratio of fast rotators to slow rotators on the scale of the thermal relaxation time increases with the width of the particle size distribution. This will offer means to constrain the particle size distribution with the systematic thermal infrared observations carried by the Cassini probe.

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