Past and present dynamics of the circumbinary moons in the Pluto-Charon system

TL;DR

This study investigates the past and present orbital dynamics of Pluto-Charon’s small circumbinary moons using numerical simulations, revealing their survival through tidal evolution and the potential existence of undiscovered moons.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive dynamical analysis of Pluto-Charon’s moons, incorporating realistic models of tidal evolution and oblateness, and demonstrates their survival without resonant transport.

Findings

Moons are nearly circular, planar, and resonant with Charon today.

Moons can cross major mean motion resonances during tidal expansion.

Small moons likely survived tidal evolution without requiring resonant transport.

Abstract

The Pluto-Charon (PC) pair is usually thought of as a binary in the dual synchronous state, which is the endpoint of its tidal evolution. The discovery of the small circumbinary moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, placed close to the mean motions resonances (MMRs) 3/1, 4/1, 5/1, and 6/1 with Charon, respectively, reveals a complex dynamical architecture of the system. Several formation mechanisms for the PC system have been proposed. Our goal is to analyse the past and current orbital dynamics of the satellite system. We study the past and current dynamics of the PC system through a large set of numerical integrations of the exact equations of motion, accounting for the gravitational interactions of the PC binary with the small moons and the tidal evolution, modelled by the constant time lag approach. We construct the stability maps in a pseudo-Jacobian coordinate system. In addition, considering a more realistic model, which accounts for the zonal harmonic $J_2$ of the Pluto's oblateness and the accreting mass of Charon, we investigate the tidal evolution of the whole system. Our results show that, in the chosen reference frame, the current orbits of all satellites are nearly circular, nearly planar and nearly resonant with Charon that can be seen as an indicator of the convergent dissipative migration experimented by the system in the past. We verify that, under the assumption that Charon completes its formation during the tidal expansion, the moons can safely cross the main MMRs, without their motions being strongly excited and consequently ejected. In the more realistic scenario proposed here, the small moons survive the tidal expansion of the PC binary, without having to invoke the hypothesis of the resonant transport. Our results point out that the possibility to find additional small moons in the PC system cannot be ruled out.