Transient Jupiter Co-orbitals from Solar System Sources

TL;DR

This paper explores how asteroids from the main belt and Centaurs can become transient co-orbitals with Jupiter, including retrograde orbits, and estimates their population and origins.

Contribution

It identifies dynamical pathways for asteroid capture into Jupiter's co-orbital region, including retrograde states, and compares their sources from NEAs and Centaurs.

Findings

Approximately 1 km-scale asteroid in transient co-orbital orbit at any time.

About 1% of transient co-orbitals are retrograde.

Centaur capture dominates the production of temporary direct co-orbitals.

Abstract

We demonstrate dynamical pathways from main-belt asteroid and Centaur orbits to those in co-orbital motion with Jupiter, including the retrograde (inclination $i>90^o$) state. We estimate that at any given time, there should be $\sim1$ kilometer-scale or larger escaped asteroid in a transient direct (prograde) orbit with semimajor axis near that of Jupiter's ($a\simeq a_J$), with proportionally more smaller objects as determined by their size distribution. Most of these objects would be in the horseshoe dynamical state, which are hard to detect due to their moderate eccentricities (spending most of their time beyond 5 AU) and longitudes relative to Jupiter being spread nearly all over the sky. We also show that $\approx$1% of the transient asteroid co-orbital population is on retrograde orbits with Jupiter. This population, like the recently identified asteroid (514107) 2015 BZ$_{509}$, can spend millions of years with $a\simeq a_J$ including tens or hundreds of thousands of years formally in the retrograde 1:-1 co-orbital resonance. Escaping near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are thus likely the precursors to the handful of known high-inclination objects with $a\simeq a_J$. We compare the production of jovian co-orbitals from escaping NEAs with those from incoming Centaurs. We find that temporary direct co-orbitals are likely dominated by Centaur capture, but we only find production of (temporary) retrograde jovian co-orbitals (including very long-lived ones) from the NEA source. We postulate that the primordial elimination of the inner Solar System's planetesimal population could provide a supply route for a metastable outer Solar System reservoir for the high-inclination Centaurs.