Semi-analytical estimates for the chaotic diffusion in the Second Fundamental Model of Resonance. Application to Earth’s navigation satellites

Abstract

We discuss the applicability of the Melnikov and Landau–Teller theories in obtaining semi-analytical estimates of the speed of chaotic diffusion in systems driven by the separatrix-like stochastic layers of a resonance belonging to the ‘second fundamental model’ (SFM) (Henrard and Lemaitre, 1983). Stemming from the analytic solution for the SFM in terms of Weierstrass elliptic functions, we introduce stochastic Melnikov and Landau–Teller models allowing to locally approximate chaotic diffusion as a sequence of uncorrelated ‘jumps’ observed in the time series yielding the slow evolution of an ensemble of trajectories in the space of the adiabatic actions of the system. Such jumps occur in steps of one per homoclinic loop. We show how a semi-analytical determination of the probability distribution of the size of the jumps can be arrived at by the Melnikov and Landau–Teller approximate theories. Computing also the mean time required per homoclinic loop, we arrive at estimates of the chaotic diffusion coefficient in such systems. As a concrete example, we refer to the long-term diffusion of a small object (e.g. Earth navigation satellite or space debris) within the chaotic layers of the so-called 2g+h lunisolar resonance, which is of the SFM type. After a suitable normal form reduction of the Hamiltonian, we compute estimates of the speed of diffusion of these objects, which compare well with the results of numerical experiments.