Size-Frequency Distribution of Terrestrial Leftover Planetesimals and S-complex Implanted Asteroids

2025/04/15 by Rogerio Deienno, Deienno, Rogerio, André Izidoro +9 · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #Planetary Science and Exploration

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.11405

openalex publication_date 2025/04/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The isotopic composition of meteorites linked to S-complex asteroids has been used to suggest that these asteroids originated in the terrestrial planet's region, i.e., within 1.5 au, and later got implanted into the main asteroid belt (MAB). Dynamical models of planet formation support this view. Yet, it remains to be demonstrated whether the currently observed size-frequency distribution (SFD) of S-complex bodies in the MAB can be reproduced via this implantation process. Here we studied the evolution of the SFD of planetesimals during the accretion of terrestrial planets with the code LIPAD self-consistently accounting for growth and fragmentation of planetesimals. In our simulations we vary the initial surface density of planetesimals, the gaseous disk lifetime, and the power slope of the initial planetesimals' SFD. We compared the final SFDs of leftover planetesimals in the terrestrial planet region with the SFD of observed S-complex MAB objects (D > 100km). We found that the SFDs of our planetesimal populations and that of S-complex MAB objects show very similar cumulative power index (i.e., q ≈ 3.15 in N(>D)~∝ D^-q) for slopes in the diameter range 100 km < D < 400 km by the end of our simulations. Our results support the hypothesis of S-complex MAB implantation from the terrestrial planet forming region, assuming implantation is size-independent, and implies that implantation efficiency is smaller than O(10^{\rm -2}--10^{\rm -4}) to avoid over-implantation of (4) Vesta-sized objects or larger.

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