Special mean motion resonance pairs: Mimas-Tethys and Titan-Hyperion

Abstract

Five pairs of large solar system satellites occupy first order mean-motion resonances (MMRs). Among these, the pairs of Mimas-Tethys and Titan-Hyperion are special. They are located much deeper in resonance than the others and their critical arguments librate with much greater amplitudes. These characteristics are traced to the insignificant damping, over $\Gyr$ timescales, of Mimas's orbital inclination and Hyperion's orbital eccentricity. Absent that, these resonances would not survive. Instead their librations would be overstable and escape from resonance would occur on the relevant damping time. Unlike the aforementioned MMRs, those involving Enceladus-Dione, Io-Europa, and Europa-Ganymede are limited by eccentricity damping. They must either remain at the shallow depths they currently occupy, or, if they venture deeper, retreat after a limited time. The latter seems almost certain for Enceladus-Dione and quite likely for the others, We examine the MMRs involving Mimas-Tethys and Titan-Hyperion under the assumption that they formed as a result of convergent migration. Capture probabilities are $\sim 6\%$ for the former and $100\%$ for the latter. The possibility of collisional excitation of their large librations is investigated but largely discounted.