Mathematics – Probability
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.5109k&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #51.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.516
Mathematics
Probability
Scientific paper
Asteroidal dust particles are injected into the zodiacal cloud following the catastrophic disruption of their parent bodies in family-forming events. These particles then evolve both dynamically and collisionally resulting in the formation of solar system dust bands, as discovered by IRAS. We investigated the migration of these particles from their source region in the main asteroid belt into the inner solar system under the effect of Poynting-Robertson drag with the aim of better understanding the contribution of particles from the dust bands to the background zodiacal cloud. Following a modified analytical approach based on the formulism developed by Öpik, we focused on the effect of gravitational close encounters with Mars on the dust particle orbits. This analysis showed that, while dust particles may not directly collide with Mars, a sizable fraction of the particles probably enter the martian Hill sphere and thus may suffer potentially significant perturbations to their orbits. We find that the probability of a gravitational close encounter with Mars depends upon the size of the particle, and the eccentricity and inclination of its orbit, with the likelihood of an encounter biased towards larger particles on near-circular orbits close to the orbital plane of Mars. In particular, the dependency on inclination may bias the population of asteroid family particles that reach near-Earth space towards particles from higher-inclination sources. We also report on the outcome of numerical simulations undertaken to verify these analytical results. In addition, these simulations reveal the magnitude of the effect of gravitational scattering by Mars on the orbits of the dust particles and the level of importance of trapping in martian mean-motion resonances. Inclusion of these effects into our dynamical modeling will be another step towards producing a detailed global model of the zodiacal cloud. This work is supported by NASA PGG program grant NNG05GI99G.
Dermott Stanley F.
Espy Ashley J.
Kehoe Thomas J.
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