2018MNRAS.474.4855V

The behaviour of an interior test particle in the secular three-body problem has been studied extensively. A well-known feature is the Lidov-Kozai resonance in which the test particle's argument of periastron librates about ±90° and large oscillations in eccentricity and inclination are possible. Less explored is the inverse problem: the dynamics of an exterior test particle and an interior perturber. We survey numerically the inverse secular problem, expanding the potential to hexadecapolar order and correcting an error in the published expansion. Four secular resonances are uncovered that persist in full N-body treatments (in what follows, p and Ω are the longitudes of periapse and of ascending node, ω is the argument of periapse, and subscripts 1 and 2 refer to the inner perturber and the outer test particle): (i) an orbit-flipping quadrupole resonance requiring a non-zero perturber eccentricity e₁, in which Ω₂ - p₁ librates about ±90°; (ii) a hexadecapolar resonance (the 'inverse Kozai' resonance) for perturbers that are circular or nearly so and inclined by I ≃ 63°/117°, in which ω₂ librates about ±90° and which can vary the particle eccentricity by Δe₂ ≃ 0.2 and lead to orbit crossing; (iii) an octopole 'apse-aligned' resonance at I ≃ 46°/107° wherein p₂ - p₁ librates about 0° and Δe₂ grows with e₁; and (iv) an octopole resonance at I ≃ 73°/134° wherein p₂ + p₁ - 2Ω₂ librates about 0° and Δe₂ can be as large as 0.3 for small but non-zero e₁. Qualitatively, the more eccentric the perturber, the more the particle's eccentricity and inclination vary; also, more polar orbits are more chaotic. Our solutions to the inverse problem have potential application to the Kuiper belt and debris discs, circumbinary planets, and hierarchical stellar systems.