The dynamical evolution of escaped Jupiter Trojan asteroids, link to other minor body populations

Abstract

Jupiter Trojan asteroids are located around L4 and L5 Lagrangian points on relatively stable orbits, in 1:1 MMR with Jupiter. However, not all of them lie in orbits that remain stable over the age of the Solar System. Unstable zones allow some Trojans to escape in time scales shorter than the Solar System age. This may contribute to populate other small body populations. In this paper, we study this process by performing long-term numerical simulations of the observed Trojans, focusing on the trajectories of those that leave the resonance. The orbits of current Trojans are taken as initial conditions and their evolution is followed under the gravitational action of the Sun and the planets. We find the rate of escape of Trojans from L5, ~1.1 times greater than from L4. The majority of escaped Trojans have encounters with Jupiter although they have encounters with the other planets too. Almost all escaped Trojans reach the comet zone, ~90% cross the Centaur zone and only L4 Trojans reach the transneptunian zone. Considering the real asymmetry between L4 and L5, we show that 18 L4 Trojans and 14 L5 Trojans with diameter D > 1 km are ejected from the resonance every Myr. The contribution of the escaped Trojans to other minor body populations would be negligible, being the contribution from L4 and L5 to JFCs and no-JFCs almost the same, and the L4 contribution to Centaurs and TNOs, orders of magnitude greater than that of L5. Considering the collisional removal, besides the dynamical one, and assuming that Trojans that escape due to collisions follow the same dynamical behavior that the ones removed by dynamics, we would have a minor contribution of Trojans to comets and Centaurs. However, there would be some specific regions were escaped Trojans could be important such as ACOs, Encke-type comets, S-L 9-type impacts on Jupiter and NEOs.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Icarus

References in corpus (13)

• Preliminary Results from NEOWISE: An Enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for Solar System Science
• Capture of Trojans by Jumping Jupiter
• Population and Size Distribution of Small Jovian Trojan Asteroids
• Origin and Evolution of Short-Period Comets
• Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of Trojan Asteroids: Evidence for Two Compositional Groups
• WISE/NEOWISE Observations of the Jovian Trojans: Preliminary Results
• WISE/NEOWISE Observations of the Jovian Trojan Population: Taxonomy
• Visible spectroscopic and photometric survey of Jupiter Trojans: final results on dynamical families
• The Properties of Jovian Trojan Asteroids Listed in SDSS Moving Object Catalog 3
• Albedos of Small Jovian Trojans
• The color-magnitude distribution of small Jupiter Trojans
• Dynamical evolution and end states of active and inactive Centaurs
• Giga-Year Evolution of Jupiter Trojans and the Asymmetry Problem

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Solar System Physics for Exoplanet Research
• Dust trapping around Lagrangian points in protoplanetary disks
• Centaur and giant planet crossing populations: origin and distribution
• Asymmetry in the number of L4 and L5 Jupiter Trojans driven by jumping Jupiter
• Stability of Jovian Trojans and their collisional families
• Potential Themis Family Asteroid Contribution to the Jupiter-Family Comet Population
• Metal pollution of the solar white dwarf by solar system small bodies
• Origin and Evolution of Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids
• The Transient Jupiter Trojan-Like Orbit of P/2019 LD2 (ATLAS)
• Influence of the Yarkovsky force on Jupiter Trojan asteroids
• From Centaurs to comets - 40 years
• On a possibility of transfer of asteroids from the 2:1 mean motion resonance with Jupiter to the Centaur zone
• Astrocladistics of the Jovian Trojan Swarms
• A pair of Jovian Trojans at the L4 Lagrange point
• Detection of an extremely large impact flash on Jupiter by high-cadence multiwavelength observations
• The invasion of a free floating planet and the number asymmetry of Jupiter Trojans
• Collisional study of Hilda and quasi-Hilda asteroids
• The Sizes and Albedos of Centaurs 2014 YY ${}_{49}$ and 2013 NL ${}_{24}$ from Stellar Occultation Measurements by RECON
• A thermophysical and dynamical study of the Hildas (1162) Larissa and (1911) Schubart
• Apsidal asymmetric-alignment of Jupiter Trojans
• Recurrent Cometary Activity Discovered on Quasi-Hilda Jupiter Family Comet 362P/(457175) 2008 GO98