Numerical Simulations of (10199) Chariklo’s Rings with a Resonant Perturber

Abstract

The discovery of two thin rings around the ∼ 250 km sized Centaur Chariklo was the first of its kind, and their formation and evolutionary mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we explore a single shepherd satellite as a mechanism to confine Chariklo’s rings. We also investigate the impact of such a perturber on reaccretion, which is a likely process for material located outside the Roche limit. We have modified N-body code that was developed for Saturn’s rings to model the Chariklo system. Exploration of a reasonable parameter space indicates that rings like those observed could be stable as the result of a single satellite with a mass of a few ×1013 kg that is in orbital resonance with the rings. There is a roughly linear relationship between the model optical depth and the mass of the satellite required to confine a ring. Ring particles do not accrete into moonlets during hard-sphere simulations. However, a reasonable fraction of the ring material forms into moonlets after a few tens of orbits for soft-sphere collisions. The ring-particle properties are thus key parameters in terms of moonlet accretion or destruction in this system.