Secular resonances and the origin of eccentricities of Mars and the asteroids

Abstract

A mechanism is treated for the origin of the eccentricities of the asteroids and of Mars: secular resonances associated with the dissipation of a primitive solar nebula. The nebula is modeled as a two-dimensional disk; a closed-form, convergent integral is derived to represent its disturbing function. Dissipation of this nebula gives rise to “excitation waves”, produced by the variable location of the secular resonances, which can excite the eccentricity of Mars, and scatter asteroidal eccentricities through the observed ranges. By requiring that these ranges match the observed values as a functions of semimajor axis, one infers: (a) the primordial eccentricities of Jupiter and Saturn initially had amplitudes different from present-day values, but these amplitudes approached the present values toward the end of nebular dissipation; (b) the nebular dissipation time scale may have been of the order of (few) × 10 4 years as the dissipation neared completion (but this depends on the validity of linear equations which model the inherently nonlinear asteroidal eccentricity pumping); (c) it is reasonable to propose a common origin for the eccentricies of Mars and the asteroids. A simple extension of the model also accounts for the quasi-Gaussian distribution of the number density of asteroidal eccentricities.