Configuration of the Martian dust rings: shapes, densities, and size distributions from direct integrations of particle trajectories

Abstract

ABSTRACTIt is expected since the early 1970s that tenuous dust rings are formed by grains ejected from the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos by impacts of hypervelocity interplanetary projectiles. In this paper, we perform direct numerical integrations of a large number of dust particles originating from Phobos and Deimos. In the numerical simulations, the most relevant forces acting on the dust are included: Martian gravity with spherical harmonics up to fifth degree and fifth order, gravitational perturbations from the Sun, Phobos, and Deimos, solar radiation pressure, as well as the Poynting–Robertson drag. In order to obtain the ring configuration, simulation results of various grain sizes ranging from submicrometres to 100 μm are averaged over a specified initial mass distribution of ejecta. We find that for the Phobos ring grains smaller than about 2 μm are dominant; while the Deimos ring is dominated by dust in the size range of about 5–20 μm. The asymmetries, number densities, and geometric optical depths of the rings are quantified from simulations. The results are compared with the upper limits of the optical depth inferred from Hubble observations. We compare to previous work and discuss the uncertainties of the models.