A new expansion of planetary disturbing function and applications to interior, co-orbital and exterior resonances with planets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel analytical expansion of the planetary disturbing function applicable to bodies with arbitrary inclinations and semimajor axis ratios, facilitating the study of resonant dynamics in various orbital configurations.

Contribution

The paper develops a new, general expansion of the disturbing function that is valid for arbitrary inclinations and semimajor axis ratios, enhancing the analysis of resonant dynamics.

Findings

The new expansion accurately models resonant dynamics across different orbital configurations.

Analytical results agree well with numerical simulations.

Application to Jupiter and Neptune resonances demonstrates the model's effectiveness.

Abstract

In this study, a new expansion of planetary disturbing function is developed for describing the resonant dynamics of minor bodies with arbitrary inclinations and semimajor axis ratios. In practice, the disturbing function is expanded around circular orbits in the first step and then, in the second step, the resulting mutual interaction between circular orbits is expanded around a reference point. As usual, the resulting expansion is presented in the Fourier series form, where the force amplitudes are dependent on the semimajor axis, eccentricity and inclination and the harmonic arguments are linear combinations of the mean longitude, longitude of pericenter and longitude of ascending node of each mass. The resulting new expansion is valid for arbitrary inclinations and semimajor axis ratios. In the case of mean motion resonant configuration, the disturbing function can be easily averaged to produce the analytical expansion of resonant disturbing function. Based on the analytical expansion, the Hamiltonian model of mean motion resonances is formulated, and the resulting analytical developments are applied to Jupiter's inner and co-orbital resonances and Neptune's exterior resonances. Analytical expansion is validated by comparing the analytical results with the associated numerical outcomes.