On the Dynamics of Inclined Neptune's Trojans

TL;DR

This paper studies the stability and chaos of Neptune's Trojan-like asteroids, revealing how initial orbital parameters influence their long-term behavior and identifying a chaotic gap at 45 degrees inclination.

Contribution

It provides a detailed dynamical map of Neptune's Trojans, highlighting the instability at 45 degrees inclination and explaining the chaos mechanism involved.

Findings

Unstable gap at i=45 degrees identified

Dynamical map of (a,i)-plane constructed

Chaos mechanism at specific inclinations explained

Abstract

The dynamics of artificial asteroids on the Trojan-like orbits around Neptune is investigated in this paper. We describe the dependence of the orbital stability on the initial semimajor axis a and inclination i by constructing a dynamical map on the (a,i)-plane. Rich details are revealed in the dynamical map, especially a unstable gap at i=45 deg is determined and the mechanism triggering chaos in this region is figured out. Our investigation can be used to guide the observations.