Dynamical Maps of the Inner Asteroid Belt

Abstract

We construct the dynamic portrait of the inner asteroidal belt using the information about the distribution of the test particles, which were initially placed on a perfectly rectangular grid of initial conditions, after 4.2 Myr of gravitational interactions with the Sun and five planets, from Mars to Neptune. Using the Spectral Analysis Method introduced by Michtchenko et al. (2002), we illustrate the asteroidal behaviour on the dynamical maps. We superpose over the maps the information on the proper elements and proper frequencies of the real objects, extracted from the database AstDyS (Milani & Knežević 1994; Knežević & Milani 2003). The comparison of the maps with the distribution of the real objects allows us to detect possible dynamical mechanisms acting in the domain under study: these mechanisms are related to mean-motion and secular resonances. Their long-lasting action, overlaying with the Yarkovsky effect, may explain many observed features of the distribution of the asteroids.