Other
Scientific paper
May 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dda....40.0613h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #40, #6.13; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.901
Other
Scientific paper
The outer edge of Saturn's main B ring is maintained by an m=2 inner Lindblad resonance (ILR) with the satellite Mimas, while the outer edge of Saturn's A ring is preserved by an m=7 ILR with the Janus/Epimetheus coorbital pair. These satellites' resonant perturbations excite a nonlinear, m-lobed disturbance at the rings' outer edges whose amplitudes and orientations depend on the ring's physical properties, such as the ring's surface density, viscosity, and the ring particles' dispersion velocity. To study this further, we use a streamline formalism (e.g., Borderies, Goldreich, and Tremaine 1982) to develop a model of the ring that accounts for the ring's self-gravity, viscosity, pressure, and the satellite perturbations. Simulations are then used to show how the ring's response to resonant perturbations vary with the ring's physical properties.
Note that the maintenance of a ring-edge at a resonance also requires that the viscous torque, which wants to drive ring material radially outwards and across the resonance, be balanced by the satellite's resonant torque that endeavors to shepherd ring material inwards. Interestingly, most of the seemingly "plausible" models of the A and B rings that we have considered thus far tend to fail to achieve the required torque balance. We suspect that this is due to a weakening of the satellite's torque by the ring's gravity and/or other nonlinear effects. Nonetheless, we have found two interesting but unanticipated ring-scenarios that do result in a torque balance at resonance, which will be described in the poster.
Hahn Joseph M.
Porco Carolyn C.
Spitale Joseph N.
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