Atmospheric tides and their consequences on the rotational dynamics of terrestrial planets

¹ LAB, Université de Bordeaux, CNRS UMR 5804, Université de Bordeaux - Bât. B18N, Allée Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, CS50023, 33615 Pessac Cedex, France
² IMCCE, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS UMR 8028, PSL, 77 Avenue Denfert-Rochereau, 75014 Paris, France
³ Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/DRF - CNRS - Université Paris Diderot, IRFU/SAp Centre de Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
⁴ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Research University, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, UPMC Univ. Paris 6, Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cit, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France

Abstract

Atmospheric tides can have a strong impact on the rotational dynamics of planets. They are of most importance for terrestrial planets located in the habitable zone of their host star, where their competition with solid tides is likely to drive the body towards non-synchronized rotation states of equilibrium, as observed in the case of Venus. Contrary to other planetary layers, the atmosphere is sensitive to both gravitational and thermal forcings, through a complex dynamical coupling involving the effects of Coriolis acceleration and characteristics of the atmospheric structure. These key physics are usually not taken into account in modelings used to compute the evolution of planetary systems, where tides are described with parametrised prescriptions. In this work, we present a new ab initio modeling of atmospheric tides adapting the theory of the Earth’s atmospheric tides (Chapman & Lindzen 1970) to other terrestrial planets. We derive analytic expressions of the tidal torque, as a function of the tidal frequency and parameters characterizing the internal structure (e.g. the Brunt-Väisälä frequency, the radiative frequency, the pressure heigh scale). We show that stratification plays a key role, the tidal torque being strong in the case of convective atmospheres (i.e. with a neutral stratification) and weak in case of atmosphere convectively stable. In a second step, the model is used to determine the non-synchronized rotation states of equilibrium of Venus-like planets as functions of the physical parameters of the system. These results are detailed in Auclair-Desrotour et al. (2016a) and Auclair-Desrotour et al. (2016b).