Dynamical evolution of escaped plutinos, another source of Centaurs

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze how plutinos escape from resonance and evolve into Centaurs, revealing their escape routes, lifetimes, and contribution to the Centaur population.

Contribution

It provides a detailed dynamical analysis of recently escaped plutinos and quantifies their role as a secondary source of Centaurs, which was not previously well understood.

Findings

Escape rate of plutinos is 1-10 per 10 years.

Mean lifetime of escaped plutinos in the Centaur zone is 108 Myr.

Escaped plutinos contribute less than 6% to the total Centaur population.

Abstract

It was shown in previous works the existence of weakly chaotic orbits in the plutino population that diffuse very slowly. These orbits correspond to long-term plutino escapers and then represent the plutinos that are escaping from the resonance at present. In this paper we perform numerical simulations in order to explore the dynamical evolution of plutinos recently escaped from the resonance. The numerical simulations were divided in two parts. In the first one we evolved 20,000 test particles in the resonance in order to detect and select the long-term escapers. In the second one, we numerically integrate the selected escaped plutinos in order to study their dynamical post escaped behavior. Our main results include the characterization of the routes of escape of plutinos and their evolution in the Centaur zone. We obtained a present rate of escape of plutinos between 1 and 10 every 10 years. The escaped plutinos have a mean lifetime in the Centaur zone of 108 Myr and their contribution to the Centaur population would be a fraction of less than 6 % of the total Centaur population. In this way, escaped plutinos would be a secondary source of Centaurs.