Quasi‐Stationary States of Dust Flows under Poynting‐Robertson Drag: New Analytical and Numerical Solutions

Abstract

The effect of solar or stellar radiation on dust particles' trajectories (the Poynting-Robertson drag) has been studied by a number of authors and applied to interplanetary dust dynamics in numerical computations. Meanwhile, some important features of dust flows can be studied analytically by implementing our novel hydrodynamical approach to use the continuity equation written in the particle's orbital elements as coordinates (Gor'kavyi, Ozernoy, & Mather). By employing this approach and integrating the continuity equation, we are able to find two integrals of motion when the Poynting-Robertson drag dominates the dissipative forces in the dust flow. These integrals of motion enable us to explore basic characteristics of dust flows from any sources in the solar system (such as asteroids, comets, Kuiper belt, etc.) or in another planetary system. In particular, we have reproduced the classical solution n(r) ∝ r-1 that approximately represents the overall distribution of dust in the solar system. We have also investigated various factors that could be responsible for the deviations of the power-law index in n(r) ∝ rδ from δ = -1, including the influences of the orbital characteristics of dust sources, the evaporation of dust particles, as well as mixtures of dust particles of both asteroidal and cometary origin. We have calculated the masses and number densities of asteroidal and cometary components of the zodiacal cloud at different distances from the Sun.