The doubly librating Plutinos

TL;DR

This paper studies the long-term orbital dynamics of Plutinos, revealing a new clustering pattern in their orbital parameters and identifying a significant fraction exhibiting argument of perihelion libration, which informs models of their history.

Contribution

It uncovers a previously unknown clustering of $g$ librators among Plutinos and links this to periodic orbits, providing new insights into their dynamical structure.

Findings

Approximately 16% of Plutinos show $g$ libration.

Librators cluster around an arc in eccentricity-inclination space.

The structure is related to periodic orbits of the third kind.

Abstract

Named for orbital kinship with Pluto, the Plutinos are a prominent group of Kuiper Belt objects whose orbital periods are in libration about the 3/2 ratio with Neptune's. We investigate the long term orbital dynamics of known Plutinos, with attention to the additional libration (or lack thereof) of their argument of perihelion, $g$, a well-known characteristic of Pluto's orbit. We show that the $g$ librators amongst the Plutinos cluster around an arc in the eccentricity--inclination parameter plane. This previously unreported dynamical structure is owed to a family of periodic orbits of the third kind in the restricted problem of three bodies, identified by Poincar\'e at the end of the 19th century. Approximately sixteen percent of the currently known Plutinos exhibit $g$ librations, a far greater fraction than the ratios of the associated libration frequencies. These results may offer new constraints for theoretical models of the dynamical history of the Plutinos and of the orbital migration history of the giant planets.