Signatures of recent asteroid disruptions in the formation and evolution of solar system dust bands

TL;DR

This study models a recent asteroid disruption that formed a faint dust band, revealing details about dust size distribution, ejection velocities, and implications for the evolution of the zodiacal cloud.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed dynamical modeling linking a specific recent asteroid disruption to observed dust band structures.

Findings

Dust band is from a recent asteroid disruption less than 1 million years ago.

Dust size distribution is dominated by small particles with a power-law index of 2.1.

Ejection velocities are a few times the asteroid's escape velocity.

Abstract

We have performed detailed dynamical modeling of the structure of a faint dust band observed in coadded IRAS data at an ecliptic latitude of 17$^{\circ}$ that convincingly demonstrates that it is the result of a relatively recent (significantly less than 1 Ma) disruption of an asteroid and is still in the process of forming. We show here that young dust bands retain information on the size distribution and cross-sectional area of dust released in the original asteroid disruption, before it is lost to orbital and collisional decay. We find that the Emilkowalski cluster is the source of this partial band and that the dust released in the disruption would correspond to a regolith layer $\sim$3 m deep on the $\sim$10 km diameter source body's surface. The dust in this band is described by a cumulative size-distribution inverse power-law index with a lower bound of 2.1 (implying domination of cross-sectional area by small particles) for dust particles with diameters ranging from a few $\mu$m up to a few cm. The coadded observations show that the thermal emission of the dust band structure is dominated by large (mm--cm size) particles. We find that dust particle ejection velocities need to be a few times the escape velocity of the Emilkowalski cluster source body to provide a good fit to the inclination dispersion of the observations. We discuss the implications that such a significant release of material during a disruption has for the temporal evolution of the structure, composition, and magnitude of the zodiacal cloud.