Systematics and Consequences of Comet Nucleus Outgassing Torques David Jewitt1;2 1Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences, UCLA, 595 Charles Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Los Angeles, 430 Portola Plaza, Box 951547, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547
[email protected] Received ; accepted Revised 2021 March 17 arXiv:2103.10577v1 [astro-ph.EP] 19 Mar 2021 { 2 { ABSTRACT Anisotropic outgassing from comets exerts a torque sufficient to rapidly change the angular momentum of the nucleus, potentially leading to rotational instability. Here, we use empirical measures of spin changes in a sample of comets to characterize the torques and to compare them with expectations from a sim- ple model. Both the data and the model show that the characteristic spin-up timescale, τs, is a strong function of nucleus radius, rn. Empirically, we find that the timescale for comets (most with perihelion 1 to 2 AU and eccentricity ∼0.5) 2 varies as τs ∼ 100rn, where rn is expressed in kilometers and τs is in years. The −2 fraction of the nucleus surface that is active varies as fA ∼ 0:1rn . We find that the median value of the dimensionless moment arm of the torque is kT = 0.007 (i.e. ∼0.7% of the escaping momentum torques the nucleus), with weak (<3σ) −3 2 evidence for a size dependence kT ∼ 10 rn. Sub-kilometer nuclei have spin- up timescales comparable to their orbital periods, confirming that outgassing torques are quickly capable of driving small nuclei towards rotational disrup- tion.