Long-term dynamical survival of deep Earth coorbitals

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze the long-term stability and survival of Earth co-orbital asteroids, considering various dynamical effects and size-dependent escape mechanisms over billions of years.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the survival rates, population constraints, and dynamical evolution of Earth co-orbitals, including the impact of Yarkovsky effect and episodic orbital variations.

Findings

Approximately 25% of initial co-orbitals survive 50% of solar system age.

Size-dependent escape timescales, with sub-1 km asteroids escaping within 4 Gyr.

Outward Yarkovsky drift is an inefficient source of Earth's co-orbitals.

Abstract

We investigate the long-term dynamical survival of Earth co-orbital asteroids, focusing on near-circular, near-planar orbits which existing studies suggest are the most stable. Through numerical integration of test particles we show that about a quarter of an initial population can survive for at least 50\% of the age of the solar system with horseshoe particles being four to five times more likely to survive than L4/L5 Trojans. From the end state statistics we constrain the existence of planetesimal-sized objects originally in co-orbital libration, finding that typically $5^{-2}_{+7}$ such planetesimals and no more than $27^{-9}_{+30}$ (95\% confidence) could have been present. Our simulations also suggest that episodic variations in the terrestrial orbital eccentricity may have caused bulk escape of co-orbitals, though variations large enough ($>$0.01) to generate such episodes are statistically unlikely. We then consider the orbital evolution of co-orbital asteroids of sizes down to $D = 50$ m under the Yarkovsky effect and find that objects with $D$ $<$ 1 km should escape over 4 Gyr with the smallest asteroids escaping after 200 Myr. Further, we test whether Earth's co-orbital region may be populated by asteroids arriving via outward Yarkovsky drift, as conjectured by Zhou et al.~(A\&A, 622, A97, 2019). We find this is an inefficient process, as planetary close encounters rapidly scatter the orbits far from Earth's and towards the asteroid belt. Finally, we discuss how the destabilising action of Yarkovsky may be mitigated through spin state evolution or late collisional comminution of large parent asteroids.