How do the small planetary satellites rotate?

TL;DR

This paper studies the rotation states of small planetary satellites, revealing most cannot be synchronously rotating and instead rotate faster or chaotically due to dynamical stability constraints.

Contribution

It provides a dynamical stability analysis explaining the non-synchronous rotation of small planetary satellites.

Findings

Most satellites cannot have stable synchronous rotation.

Satellites tend to rotate faster than synchronously.

Chaotic rotation is less common among these satellites.

Abstract

We investigate the problem of the typical rotation states of the small planetary satellites from the viewpoint of the dynamical stability of their rotation. We show that the majority of the discovered satellites with unknown rotation periods cannot rotate synchronously, because no stable synchronous 1:1 spin-orbit state exists for them. They rotate either much faster than synchronously (those tidally unevolved) or, what is much less probable, chaotically (tidally evolved objects or captured slow rotators).