Rotational Brownian Motion on Sphere Surface and Rotational Relaxation

Rotational Brownian Motion of a Massive Binary

The orientation of a massive binary undergoes a random walk due to gravitational encounters with field stars. The rotational diffusion coefficient for a circular-orbit binary is derived via scattering experiments. The binary is shown to reorient itself by an angle of order √ m/M during the time that its semi-major axis shrinks appreciably, where M is the binary mass and m the perturber mass. Im...

Rotational Motion

Rotational Motion

Rotational Motion

Rotational Motion