Chaotic transport and chronology of complex asteroid families

Abstract

We present a transport model that describes the orbital diffusion of asteroids in chaotic regions of the three-dimensional space of proper elements. Our goal is to use a simple random-walk model to study the evolution and derive accurate age estimates for dynamically complex asteroid families. To this purpose, we first compute local diffusion coefficients, which characterize chaotic diffusion in proper eccentricity (ep) and inclination (Ip), in a selected phase-space region. Then, a Monte Carlo type code is constructed and used to track the evolution of random walkers (i.e. asteroids), by coupling diffusion in (ep, Ip) with a drift in proper semimajor axis (ap) induced by the Yarkovsky/YORP thermal effects. We validate our model by applying it to the family of (490) Veritas, for which we recover previous estimates of its age (∼8.3 Myr). Moreover, we show that the spreading of chaotic family members in proper element space is well reproduced in our random-walk simulations. Finally, we apply our model to the family of (3556) Lixiaohua, which is much older than Veritas and thus much more affected by thermal forces. We find the age of the Lixiaohua family to be 155 ± 36 Myr. © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 RAS.