GAS-DYNAMICAL FRICTION OF A PERTURBER MOVING ON A CIRCULAR ORBIT

Abstract

Dynamical friction plays an important role in reducing angular momenta of objects in orbital motions. While astronomical objects usually follow curvilinear orbits, most previous studies focused on the linear-trajectory cases. Here, we present the gravitational wake due to, and dynamical friction on, a perturber moving on a circular orbit in a uniform gaseous medium using a semi-analytic method. The circular orbit causes the density wakes to bend along the orbit into asymmetric configurations, resulting in the drag forces in both opposite (azimuthal) and lateral (radial) directions to the perturber motion, although the latter does not contribute to the orbital decay much. For a subsonic perturber, the bending of a wake is only modest and the resulting drag force in the opposite direction is remarkably similar to the linear-trajectory counterpart. On the other hand, a supersonic perturber is able to overtake its own wake, possibly multiple times, creating a high-density trailing tail. Despite the dramatic changes in the wake morphologies, the azimuthal drag force is in surprisingly good agreement with the formulae of Ostriker for the linear-trajectory cases, provided $V_pt