The Influence of Central Body Tides on Catastrophic Disruptions of Close-in Planetary Satellites

Abstract

We model the outcomes of catastrophic disruptions on small, gravity-dominated natural satellites, accounting for the tidal potential of the central body, which is neglected in classical disruption scaling laws. We introduce the concept of $Q_{\text{TD}}^{\star }$, the specific energy required to disperse half of the total mass involved in a collision, accounting for the tidal potential of a central body. We derive a simple scaling relation for $Q_{\text{TD}}^{\star }$ and demonstrate that for close-in planetary or asteroidal satellites, the tides from the central body can significantly reduce their catastrophic disruption threshold. We show that many satellites in the Solar System are in such a regime, where their disruption threshold should be much lower than that predicted by classical scaling laws which neglect tidal effects. Some notable examples include Mars' Phobos, Jupiter's Metis and Adrastea, Saturn's ring moons, Uranus' Ophelia, and Neptune's Naiad and Thalassa, among others. We argue that traditional impact scaling laws should be modified to account for tides when modeling the formation and evolution of these close-in satellites. Our derivation for $Q_{\text{TD}}^{\star }$ can easily be used in existing $N$-body and collisional evolution codes.

Published in ApJ, animations available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15790522

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