Jupiter's Metastable Companions
Sarah Greenstreet, Brett Gladman, Mario Juric

TL;DR
This study uses extensive numerical simulations to reveal that many Jovian co-orbitals, including Trojans, horseshoe orbits, and quasi-satellites, are metastable and recently captured, challenging the view of Trojans as solely primordial.
Contribution
First identification of metastable Jovian co-orbitals, including Trojans, horseshoe, and quasi-satellites, showing a dynamic steady-state population.
Findings
Many Trojans are recent captures, not primordial.
Discovered long-lived horseshoe co-orbitals.
Identified metastable quasi-satellites with lifetimes up to 130 kyr.
Abstract
Jovian co-orbitals share Jupiter's orbit in 1:1 mean motion resonance. This includes 10,000 so-called Trojan asteroids surrounding the leading (L4) and trailing (L5) Lagrange points, viewed as stable groups dating back to planet formation. Via a massive numerical study we identify for the first time some Trojans which are certainly only `metastable'; instead of being primordial, they are recent captures from heliocentric orbits into moderately long-lived (10 kyr - 100 Myr) metastable states that will escape back to the scattering regime. We have also identified (1) the first two jovian horseshoe co-orbitals that exist for many resonant libration periods, and (2) eight jovian quasi-satellites with metastable lifetimes of 4-130 kyr. Our perspective on the Trojan population is thus now more complex as Jupiter joins the other giant planets in having known metastable co-orbitals which are…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science · Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies · Planetary Science and Exploration
