City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research New York City College of Technology 2020 Tidal locking and the gravitational fold catastrophe Andrea Ferroglia CUNY New York City College of Technology Miguel C. N. Fiolhais CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ny_pubs/679 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact:
[email protected] Tidal locking and the gravitational fold catastrophe Andrea Ferroglia1;2 and Miguel C. N. Fiolhais3;4 1The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA 2 Physics Department, New York City College of Technology, The City University of New York, 300 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA 3 Science Department, Borough of Manhattan Community College, The City University of New York, 199 Chambers St, New York, NY 10007, USA 4 LIP, Departamento de F´ısica, Universidade de Coimbra, 3004-516 Coimbra, Portugal The purpose of this work is to study the phenomenon of tidal locking in a pedagogical framework by analyzing the effective gravitational potential of a two-body system with two spinning objects. It is shown that the effective potential of such a system is an example of a fold catastrophe. In fact, the existence of a local minimum and saddle point, corresponding to tidally-locked circular orbits, is regulated by a single dimensionless control parameter which depends on the properties of the two bodies and on the total angular momentum of the system.