The Collisional Evolution of the Primordial Kuiper Belt, Its Destabilized Population, and the Trojan Asteroids

Abstract

The tumultuous early era of outer solar system evolution culminated when Neptune migrated across the primordial Kuiper Belt (PKB) and triggered a dynamical instability among the giant planets. This event led to the ejection of ∼99.9% of the PKB (here called the destabilized population), heavy bombardment of the giant planet satellites, and the capture of Jupiter’s Trojans. While this scenario has been widely tested using dynamical models, there have been fewer investigations into how the PKB, its destabilized population, and the Trojans experienced collisional evolution. Here we examined this issue for all three populations with the code Boulder. Our constraints included the size–frequency distributions (SFDs) of the Trojan asteroids and craters on the giant planet satellites. Using this combination, we solved for the unknown disruption law affecting bodies in these populations. The weakest ones, from an impact energy per mass perspective, were diameter D ∼ 20 m. Overall, collisional evolution produces a power-law-like shape for multikilometer Trojans and a wavy-shaped SFD in the PKB and destabilized populations. The latter can explain (i) the shapes of the ancient and younger crater SFDs observed on the giant planet satellites, (ii) the shapes of the Jupiter family and long-period comet SFDs, which experienced different degrees of collision evolution, and (iii) the present-day impact frequency of superbolides on Jupiter and smaller projectiles on Saturn’s rings. Our model results also indicate that many observed comets, the majority which are D < 10 km, are likely to be gravitational aggregates formed by large-scale collision events.

Keywords

• Kuiper belt
• Trans-Neptunian objects
• Collisional processes
• Jupiter trojans
• Comet origins
• Jovian satellites