Tidal dissipation of binaries in asteroid pairs
arXiv:2403.07727 · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115919
Abstract
Tidal dissipation in a celestial body can be used to probe its internal structure. Tides govern the orbital evolution of binary systems and therefore constraints on the interior of binary system members can be derived by knowing the age and tidal state of the binary system. For asteroids, age estimates are challenging due to a lack of direct observation of their surface. However, the age of asteroid pairs formed by rotational fission of a parent body can be derived from dynamical modeling, and as such can be used to constrain the age of binary systems existing within asteroid pairs.We study 13 binary asteroid systems existing in asteroid pairs by modeling their tidal locking and eccentricity damping timescales from tidal dissipation in the primaries and secondaries. We consider the impact of thermal torques on these timescales from the YORP and BYORP effects. The resulting constraints on the tidal dissipation ratio Q/k2 are compared to monolithic and rubble pile asteroid theories, showing that all secondaries are consistent with rubble piles with regolith layers greater than 3m and suggest that Q/k2 for rubble piles increases with radius. A particular case is the first bound secondary of asteroid (3749) Balam, whose Q/k2 is constrained to be between 2.7x10^4 and 1.4x10^6, consistent with a rubble-pile with a regolith thickness between 30m and 100m.
arXiv comment24 pages, 5 figures, 1 appendix Published in Icarus: Pou L, Nimmo F. Tidal dissipation of binaries in asteroid pairs. Icarus. 2024 Mar 15;411:115919. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115919
References in corpus (14)
- Dynamics of rotationally fissioned asteroids: Source of observed small asteroid systems
- Formation of asteroid pairs by rotational fission
- The Yarkovsky and YORP Effects
- The Physics of Bodily Tides in Terrestrial Planets, and the Appropriate Scales of Dynamical Evolution
- Tidal Evolution of Rubble Piles
- Tidal Friction and Tidal Lagging. Applicability Limitations of a Popular Formula for the Tidal Torque
- Asteroid pairs: a complex picture
- Long-term Stable Equilibria for Synchronous Binary Asteroids
- Stress and Failure Analysis of Rapidly Rotating Asteroid (29075) 1950 DA
- Tangential component of the YORP effect
- A 3-dimensional model of tangential YORP
- Binary Asteroid Systems: Tidal End States and Estimates of Material Properties
- The binary near-Earth asteroid (175706) 1996 FG3 - An observational constraint on its orbital evolution
- Tidal Evolution of Close Binary Asteroid Systems