Abstract: Coorbital bodies are observed around the Sun sharing their orbits with the planets, but also in some pairs of satellites around Saturn. The existence of coorbital planets around other stars has also been proposed. For close-in planets and satellites, the rotation slowly evolves until some kind of equilibrium is reached. When the orbits are nearly circular, the rotation period is believed to always end synchronous with the orbital period (as it happens for the Moon). Here we demonstrate that for coorbital bodies in quasi-circular orbits, stable non-synchronous rotation is possible for a wide range of mass ratios and body shapes. We further show that the rotation becomes chaotic when the natural rotational libration frequency has the same magnitude as the orbital libration frequency.
Alexandre Correia (Aveiro U.)