Evolution of cometary dust particles to the inner solar system: Initial conditions, mutual collision and final sinks

  • Published : 2017.10.10

Abstract

Interplanetary space of the solar system contains a large number of dust particles, referred to as Interplanetary Dust Particles (IDPs) cloud complex. They are observable through meteors and zodiacal lights. The relative contribution of possible sources to the IDPs cloud complex was an controversial topic, however, recent research (Yang & Ishiguro, 2015 and references therein) suggested a dominance of cometary origin. In this study, we numerically investigated the orbital evolution of cometary dust particles, with special concerns on different evolutionary tracks and its consequences according to initial orbits, size and particle shape. The effect of dust particle density and initial size-frequency distribution (SFD) were not decisive in total cloud complex mass and mass supply rate, when these physical quantities are confined by observed zodiacal light brightness and dust particle SFD at 1 au. We noticed that, if we assume the existence of fluffy aggregates discovered in the Earth's stratosphere and the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the required mass supply rate decreases significantly. We also found out that close encounters with planets (mostly Jupiter) are the dominating factor of the orbital evolution of dust particles, as the result, the lifetime of cometary dust particles are shorter than Poynting-Robertson lifetime (around 250 thousand years). As another consequence of severe close encounters, only a small fraction of cometary dust particles can be transferred into the orbit < 1 au. This effect is significant for large size particles of ${\beta}$ < 0.01. The exceptional cases are dust particles ejected from 2P/Encke and active asteroids. Because they rarely encounter with Jupiter, most dust particles ejected from those objects are governed by Poynting-Robertson effect and well transferred into the orbits of small semimajor axis. In consideration of the above effects, we directly estimated probability of mutual collisions between dust particles and concluded that mutual collisions in the IDPs cloud complex is mostly ignorable, except for the case of large sized particles from active asteroids.

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