Gravitational disturbance on asteroidal ring systems by close encounter with a small object

TL;DR

This study analyzes how gravitational disturbances from close encounters with small objects affect asteroidal ring systems, concluding that such rings are highly resilient and unlikely to be disrupted over billions of years.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of the impact of close encounters on the stability of asteroidal ring systems, introducing analytical expressions for eccentricity changes and ring lifetime estimates.

Findings

Disruptive encounters require a perturber as massive as or more massive than the ringed object.

Ring systems around Chariklo, Haumea, and Quaoar are stable over >10^4 Gyr against close encounters.

Outer solar system rings are unlikely to be severely damaged by small object encounters.

Abstract

To date, rings are found around a Centaur (10199) Chariklo, trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) (136108) Haumea, and (50000) Quaoar. These discoveries suggest that asteroidal ring systems may be common, particularly in the outer solar system. Since collisions are a ubiquitous and fundamental evolutionary process throughout the solar system, we conjecture that asteroidal ring systems must have experienced close encounters with small objects as part of their evolutionary process. Here, we investigate the response of ring systems when they experience gravitational disturbance by a close encounter with another small object, by calculating the change in eccentricity and the fraction of lost ring particles. We find that a perturber needs to be as massive as or more massive than the ringed object, and needs to pass in the immediate vicinity of the ring in order to cause significant disruption. The change in eccentricity expected for Chariklo's inner ring and Quaoar's outer ring agrees with the analytical expression derived from the impulse approximation, while that for Haumea's ring agrees with the analytical expression called "exponential regime". If we define a lifetime of a ring as the mean time to experience disruptive close encounters that can raise the eccentricity of ring particles greater than 0.1, the lifetime for ring systems around Chariklo, Haumea, and Quaoar are >10^4 Gyr. We conclude that ring systems around Chariklo, Haumea, and Quaoar are highly unlikely to suffer from close encounters with another small object even if those systems are as old as 4 Gyr. We also find that the lifetime is shorter for smaller ringed objects, and it still exceeds 4 Gyr for km-sized ringed objects in the outer solar system. Therefore, regardless of the size of ringed objects, asteroidal ring systems in the outer solar system are unlikely to suffer severe damage by close encounter with a small object.