A correct selection of asteroid families and confirmation of a nongravitational effect action

TL;DR

This study refines asteroid family selection using size and albedo distributions, confirming a non-gravitational effect causes spatial separation of asteroids with different albedos in the belt.

Contribution

It improves asteroid family identification accuracy and provides evidence for a non-gravitational effect influencing asteroid distribution.

Findings

Correctly identified asteroid families show decreasing albedo with semi-major axis.

Most families not affected by resonances exhibit significant albedo decrease.

No families show a significant increase in albedo.

Abstract

The distribution of asteroid sizes by semimajor axes and the distribution of the number of asteroids by albedo values for separate families are used to selection the asteroid families more clearly. An analysis of the families identified by Masiero et al. (2013) was carried out with the use of the distributions of D(a) and N(p), there were defined correctly and incorrectly selected families. A decreasing of the mean albedo with semi-major axis increasing take place almost for all correctly selected families and which are not truncated by resonances. The decrease is statistically significant for the majority of these families. There is none family at a significant increase of albedo. This confirms our previous conclusion on existence of a non-gravitational effect in the asteroid belt which causes the spatial separation of asteroids with different albedos.