On the Instability of Saturns Hypothetical Retrograde Co-orbitals


Abstract in English

We find an interesting fact that fictitious retrograde co-orbitals of Saturn, or small bodies inside the retrograde 1:1 resonance with Saturn, are highly unstable in our numerical simulations. It is shown that in the presence of Jupiter, the retrograde co-orbitals will get ejected from Saturns co-orbital space within a timescale of 10 Myr. This scenario reminds us of the instability of Saturn Trojans caused by both the Great Inequality and the secular resonances. Therefore, we carry out in-depth inspections on both mechanisms and prove that the retrograde resonance overlap, raised by Great Inequality, cannot serve as an explanation for the instability of retrograde co-orbitals, due to the weakness of the retrograde 2:5 resonance with Jupiter at a low eccentricity. However, we discover that both $ u_5$ and $ u_6$ secular resonances contribute to the slow growth of the eccentricity, therefore, are possibly the primary causes of the instability inside Saturns retrograde co-orbital space.

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