Adiabatic shielding of tidal encounters
= Adiabatic shielding of tidal encounters
Adiabatic shielding suppresses the heating of an orbit when an external <tidal tensor> varies slowly compared with its orbital frequency. In a nonresonant slow encounter, <adiabatic invariance of an orbital action> lets the orbit adjust approximately reversibly, so a frozen-position <impulse approximation> overestimates the energy transfer. An <orbital resonance> can invalidate the simple slow-variation argument.