Saturn's Evolutionary History and Seismology: Survival of Deep Stably Stratified Regions in Evolutionary Models of Saturn Consistent with Ring Seismology

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Su, Yubo, Dewberry, Janosz W., Arevalo, Roberto Tejada, Sur, Ankan, Burrows, Adam
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Su, Yubo
Dewberry, Janosz W.
Arevalo, Roberto Tejada
Sur, Ankan
Burrows, Adam
author_facet Su, Yubo
Dewberry, Janosz W.
Arevalo, Roberto Tejada
Sur, Ankan
Burrows, Adam
contents With recent advances in the modeling of the solar system giant planets, rapid progress has been made in understanding the remaining questions pertaining to their formation and evolution. However, this progress has largely neglected the significant constraints on the interior of Saturn's structure imposed by the observed oscillation frequencies in its rings. Here, we study initial conditions for Saturn's evolution that, after $4.56\;\mathrm{Gyr}$ of evolution, give rise to planetary structures admitting oscillation frequencies consistent with those observed via Saturn's ring seismology. Restricting our attention to models without compact rocky cores, we achieve simultaneous good agreement with most observed properties of Saturn at the level of current evolutionary models and with key frequencies in the observed oscillation spectrum. Our preliminary work suggests that Saturn's interior stably stratified region may be moderately less extended ($\sim 0.4$--$0.5R_{\rm Sat}$) than previously thought, which is important for reconciling the seismic constraints with evolutionary models. We also tentatively find that the deep helium gradients inferred by previous, static structural modelling of Saturn's ring seismology may not be required to reproduce the observed seismology data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_02647
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Saturn's Evolutionary History and Seismology: Survival of Deep Stably Stratified Regions in Evolutionary Models of Saturn Consistent with Ring Seismology
Su, Yubo
Dewberry, Janosz W.
Arevalo, Roberto Tejada
Sur, Ankan
Burrows, Adam
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
With recent advances in the modeling of the solar system giant planets, rapid progress has been made in understanding the remaining questions pertaining to their formation and evolution. However, this progress has largely neglected the significant constraints on the interior of Saturn's structure imposed by the observed oscillation frequencies in its rings. Here, we study initial conditions for Saturn's evolution that, after $4.56\;\mathrm{Gyr}$ of evolution, give rise to planetary structures admitting oscillation frequencies consistent with those observed via Saturn's ring seismology. Restricting our attention to models without compact rocky cores, we achieve simultaneous good agreement with most observed properties of Saturn at the level of current evolutionary models and with key frequencies in the observed oscillation spectrum. Our preliminary work suggests that Saturn's interior stably stratified region may be moderately less extended ($\sim 0.4$--$0.5R_{\rm Sat}$) than previously thought, which is important for reconciling the seismic constraints with evolutionary models. We also tentatively find that the deep helium gradients inferred by previous, static structural modelling of Saturn's ring seismology may not be required to reproduce the observed seismology data.
title Saturn's Evolutionary History and Seismology: Survival of Deep Stably Stratified Regions in Evolutionary Models of Saturn Consistent with Ring Seismology
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02647