# Possible Long-Lived Asteroid Belts in the Inner Solar System

The recent years have witnessed a carnival of discoveries in the Outer Solar System \[1-3\]. Here we provide evidence from numerical simulations of orbital stability to suggest the possible existence of two long lived belts of primordial planetesimals in the Solar System. The first is the domain of the Vulcanoids ($`\mathbf{0.09}\mathbf{0.21}`$ AU) between the Sun and Mercury, where remnant planetesimals may survive on dynamically stable orbits provided they possess a characteristic radius greater than $`\mathbf{0.1}`$ km. The second is a belt between the Earth and Mars ($`\mathbf{1.08}\mathbf{1.28}`$ AU) on which an initial population of particles on circular orbits may survive for the age of the Solar System. A search through the catalogues of Near-Earth Objects reveals an excess of asteroids with low eccentricities and inclinations occupying this belt, such as the recently discovered objects 1996 XB27, 1998 HG49 and 1998 KG3.

Symplectic integrators  with individual timesteps  provide a fast algorithm that is perfectly suited to long numerical integrations of low eccentricity orbits in a nearly Keplerian force field. Individual timesteps are a great boon for our work, as orbital clocks tick much faster in the Inner Solar System than the Outer. Over a thousand test particles are distributed on concentric rings with values of the semimajor axis between $`0.1`$ AU and $`2.2`$ AU. Each of these rings is located in the invariable plane and hosts five test particles with starting longitudes $`n\times 72^{}`$ with $`n=0,\mathrm{},4`$. Initially, the inclinations and eccentricities vanish for the whole sample of test particles. The test particles are perturbed by the Sun and planets but do not themselves exert any gravitational forces. The full gravitational effects of all the planets (except Pluto) are included. The initial positions and velocities of the planets, as well as their masses, come from the JPL Planetary and Lunar Ephemerides DE405. For all the computations, the timestep for Mercury is $`14.27`$ days. The timesteps of the planets are in the ratio $`1:2:2:4:8:8:64:64`$ for Mercury moving outward through to Neptune. The relative energy error is oscillatory and has a peak amplitude of $`10^6`$ over the 100 million year integration timespans (c.f. ). After each timestep, the test particles are examined. If their orbits have become hyperbolic or have entered the sphere of influence of any planet  or have approached closer than ten solar radii to the Sun, they are removed from the simulation. This general procedure is familiar from a number of recent studies on the stability of test particles in the Solar System . For example, Holman  uncovered evidence for a possible belt between Uranus and Neptune by a similar integration of test particles in the gravitational field of the Sun and the four giant planets. His integrations reached the impressive timescale of 4.5 Gyrs – of the order of the age of the Solar System. Simulations of the inner Solar System are much more laborious, as the orbital period of Mercury is $`88`$ days (as compared to $`4332`$ days for Jupiter, the giant planet with the shortest orbital period). This forces us to use a much smaller timestep and roundoff error becomes a menacing obstacle to believable results. So, we adopt the strategy of running on a fleet of nearly twenty personal computers of varying processor speeds, so that the calculations are performed in long double precision implemented in hardware. The integration of the orbits of $`1050`$ test particles for $`100`$ Myrs occupied this fleet of computers for over four months.

Fig. 1 shows the results of this calculation. The survival times of the test particles are plotted against starting semimajor axis. There are five test particles at each starting position, so the vertical lines in the figure join five filled circles which mark their ejection times. The locations of particles that survive for the entire $`100`$ Myr timespan are marked by diamonds on the upper horizontal axis. Around each of the terrestrial planets, there is a swathe of test particles that are ejected rapidly on a precession timescale. This band is much broader around Mars than the Earth or Venus, perhaps because of the higher eccentricity of Mars’ orbit. There are also narrow belts of test particles that survive for the full integration. So, for example, all 50 of the test particles with starting semimajor axes between $`0.10.19`$ AU are still present at the end of the 100 Myr integration. The existence of a population of small asteroid-like bodies – known as the Vulcanoids – wandering in intra-Mercurial orbits has been hypothesised before \[11-13\]. There are 16 surviving test particles with starting semimajor axes between $`0.6`$ and $`0.66`$ AU, suggesting the possible existence of a narrow belt between Mercury and Venus. A somewhat larger third belt of 33 surviving test particles occupies a belt between Venus and the Earth. Their starting semimajor axes range from $`0.79`$ to $`0.91`$ AU. Finally, there is a broad belt between the Earth and Mars from $`1.08`$ to $`1.28`$ AU in which a further 26 test particles survive. The possibility of the existence of belts between Venus and the Earth and between the Earth and Mars was raised by Mikkola & Innanen  on the basis of 3 Myr integrations.

Of course, these results must be treated with considerable reserve, as 100 Myrs is just $`2\%`$ of the age of the Solar System since the assembly of the terrestrial planets ($`5\mathrm{Gyr}`$). It is straightforward to estimate that if this simulation in long double precision were to be continued till the integration time reaches even $`1\mathrm{Gyr}`$, then it would consume $`3.5`$ years of time. Accordingly, we use the standard, albeit approximate, device of re-simulating with greater resolution and extrapolating the results. At semimajor axes separated by $`0.002`$ AU, five test particles are again launched on initially circular orbits with starting longitudes $`n\times 72^{}`$ with $`n=0,\mathrm{},4`$. The number of test particles $`N(t)`$ remaining after time $`t`$ is monitored for each of the four belts. Table 1 gives the results of fitting the data between $`1\mathrm{Myr}`$ and $`100\mathrm{Myr}`$ to the following logarithmic and power-law decays:

$$N(t)=a+b\mathrm{log}_{10}\left(t[\mathrm{yrs}]\right),N(t)=\frac{10^c}{\left(t[\mathrm{yrs}]\right)^d}$$
(1)   
In the last two columns, the expected number of test particles remaining after $`1\mathrm{Gyr}`$ and $`5\mathrm{Gyr}`$ is computed. The uncertainties in the fitted parameters suggest that the logarithmic fall-off is a better – and more pessimistic – fit to the asymptotic behaviour than a power-law (c.f. ). Our extrapolations suggest that two of the belts – those lying between Mercury and Venus, and between Venus and the Earth – will become almost entirely depleted after $`5\mathrm{Gyr}`$. However, even taking a staunchly pessimistic outlook, it seems certain that some of the Vulcanoids and some of the test particles with starting semimajor axes between $`1.081.28`$ AU in the Earth-Mars belt may survive for the full age of the Solar System. We can make a crude estimate of present-day numbers by extrapolation from the Main Belt asteroids (c.f. ). Assuming that the primordial surface density falls inversely like distance, we find that the Earth-Mars belt may be occupied by perhaps a thousand or so remnant objects. Of course, these objects are now outnumbered by the more recent arrivals, the asteroids ejected via resonances from the Main Belt, which may number a few thousand in total .

A systematic search for Vulcanoids has already been conducted by Leake et al. , who exploited the fact that bodies so close to the Sun are identifiable from their substantial infrared excess. No candidate objects were found. However, the survey was limited to a small area of just 6 square degrees and was estimated to be $`75\%`$ efficient to detection of bodies brighter than 5th magnitude in the L band. This result places constraints on the existence of a population of objects with radii greater than $`50`$ km, but minor bodies with the typical sizes of small asteroids ($`10`$ km) will have evaded detection. On theoretical grounds, Vulcanoids have been proposed to resolve apparent contradictions between the geological and the geophysical evidence on the history of the surface features on Mercury . The robustness of the Vulcanoid orbits partly stems from the fact that there is only one neighbouring planet and so may be compared to the stability of the Kuiper-Edgeworth belt. Even after $`100\mathrm{Myr}`$, some $`80\%`$ of our Vulcanoid orbits still have eccentricities $`e<0.2`$ and inclinations $`i<10^{}`$. It is this evidence, together with the low rate of attrition of their numbers, that suggests that they can continue for times of the order the age of the Solar System. The outer edge of the Vulcanoid belt is at $`0.21`$ AU. Objects beyond this are dynamically unstable and are excited into Mercury-crossing orbits on $`100\mathrm{Myr}`$ timescales. The inner edge of the belt is not so sharply defined. Small objects close to the Sun may be susceptible to destruction both by Poynting-Robertson drag  and by evaporation . Taking the mean density and Bond Albedo of a typical Vulcanoid to be the same as that of Mercury, we find that objects with radii satisfying $`0.1<z<50`$ km can evade both drag and evaporation in the Vulcanoid belt. This is one of the most dynamically stable regimes in the entire Solar System. If further searches do not detect any intra-Mercurial objects, this is a strong indicator that other processes – such as planetary migrations – may have disrupted the population.

Although there are no known intra-Mercurial bodies, we can find candidate objects for the Earth-Mars belt. Suppose we search an asteroidal database  for objects with inclinations $`i<10^{}`$ and eccentricities $`e<0.2`$ between the semimajor axes of Earth and Mars, then we find that there are ten objects. Of these, seven lie within our suggested Earth-Mars belt ($`1.081.28`$ AU), which is evidence for an enhancement of nearly circular orbits in this region. An even more striking test is to search through the objects between the Earth and Mars for low eccentricity and inclination asteroids that are not planet-crossing. Then, there are only three objects (1996 XB27, 1998 HG49 and 1998 KG3) among the entire asteroids in the database, and all three lie between 1.08 and 1.28 AU. Most of the $`50`$ asteroids with semimajor axes presently located in our Earth-Mars belt are moving on orbits with large eccentricities and inclinations. They are not dynamically stable and will evolve on timescales of the order of a few Myrs. Most of these objects are believed to be asteroids ejected from resonance locations in the Main Belt, although a handful may even be comets whose surfaces have become denuded of volatiles . However, the seeming enhancement of circular orbits in this region hints at a primordial population whose orbits are very mildly eccentric and mildly inclined. Ejection from the Main Belt will tend to increase the eccentricity of an asteroid . So, the mildly eccentric objects may well be remnant planetesimals, the original denizens of the region before it was colonized by asteroids from the resonance locations in the Main Belt.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Royal Society for the money to purchase dedicated computers, as well as the Oxford Supercomputing Centre (OSCAR). Above all, we wish to thank Prasenjit Saha and Scott Tremaine for their stimulating and insightful suggestions and comments, as well as their advice on computational matters. Helpful criticism from John Chambers, Luke Dones and the two referees is also gratefully acknowledged.