Asteroids dimensions and the Truncated Pareto distribution

TL;DR

This paper analyzes asteroid diameter distributions using the truncated Pareto model, deriving statistical properties, fitting empirical data from various asteroid families, and proposing physical mechanisms for the observed Pareto tails.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical framework for asteroid diameters with truncated Pareto distributions and suggests physical explanations for the distribution tails.

Findings

Fitted asteroid diameters with truncated Pareto distributions

Derived statistical properties of the distributions

Proposed physical mechanisms for Pareto tails

Abstract

In this chapter first the statistics of the standard and truncated Pareto distributions are derived and used to fit empirical values of asteroids diameters from different families, namely, Koronis, Eos and Themis, and from the Astorb database. A theoretical analysis is then carried out and two possible physical mechanisms are suggested that account for Pareto tails in distributions of asteroids diameter.