Viscous Overstability in Saturn's B-Ring: II. Hydrodynamic Theory and Comparison to Simulations

Viscous Overstability in Saturn's B Ring

Viscous Overstability in Saturn's B Ring: I. Direct Simulations and Measurement of Transport Coefficients

✍ Heikki Salo; Jürgen Schmidt; Frank Spahn 📂 Article 📅 2001 🏛 Elsevier Science 🌐 English ⚖ 403 KB

Local simulations with up to 60,000 self-gravitating dissipatively colliding particles indicate that dense unperturbed ring systems with optical depth τ > 1 can exhibit spontaneous viscous oscillatory instability (overstability), with parameter values appropriate for Saturn's B ring. These axisymmet