Extensions of Brown Hamiltonian-III. Applications to irregular satellites of giant planets

arXiv:2605.12864 · astro-ph.EP · Submitted 2026-05-13 · Read on arXiv

Hanlun Lei, Xiaoyan Leng, Evgeni Grishin

astro-ph.EP

Submitted: 2026-05-13

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication by MNRAS Letters

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Irregular satellites, orbiting at large distances from their host planets, are subject to strong solar perturbations that render long-term orbital predictions particularly challenging.

Terminology

Abstract

Irregular satellites, orbiting at large distances from their host planets, are subject to strong solar perturbations that render long-term orbital predictions particularly challenging. Building upon the extended Brown Hamiltonian framework developed in Paper I, we introduce the modified Lidov integral (C ZLK) as a practical diagnostic index to characterize the dynamical modes. We demonstrate that a satellite is trapped inside the von Zeipel--Lidov--Kozai (ZLK) resonance when C ZLK < 0. Applying this criterion to the known population of irregular satellites, we identify 27 candidates in libration. Direct N-body simulations confirm 26 of these predictions, with the sole exception of S/2019 S1, whose discrepancy is attributed to its proximity to the separatrix. These results establish C ZLK as a decisive parameter for identifying the ZLK resonance, providing an efficient tool for analyzing the secular dynamics in weakly hierarchical three-body systems.

Related papers