• Corpus ID: 254043631

Resonant Dynamical Friction: Analytical Description

@inproceedings{Ginat2022ResonantDF,
  title={Resonant Dynamical Friction: Analytical Description},
  author={Yonadav Barry Ginat and Taras Panamarev and Bence Kocsis and Hagai B. Perets},
  year={2022}
}

• Yonadav Barry Ginat, T. Panamarev, +1 author H. Perets
• Published 27 November 2022
• Physics

We derive an analytical model for the so-called phenomenon of ‘resonant dynamical friction’, where a disc of stars around a super-massive black hole interacts with a massive perturber, so as to align its inclination with the disc’s orientation. We show that it stems from singular behaviour of the orbit-averaged equations of motion, which leads to a rapid alignment of the argument of the ascending node Ω of each of the disc stars, with that of the perturber, Ω p , with a phase-difference of 90 ◦ , for all stars whose maximum possible ˙Ω (maximised over all values of Ω for all the disc stars), is greater than ˙Ω p ; this corresponds approximately to all stars whose semi-major axes are less than twice that of the perturber. This persists until the perturber enters the disc. The predictions of this model agree with a suite of numerical N -body simulations which we perform to explore this phenomenon, for a wide range of initial conditions, masses, etc. , and are an instance of a general phenomenon. Similar effects could occur in the context of planetary systems, too.