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S. F. Dermott, C. Telesco, T. Kehoe, L. Kolokolova, L. Mahoney-Hopping (University of Florida), S. Novotny (U.S. Air Force, Kirtland AFB), M. Wyatt (University of Edinburgh), M. Zolensky (NASA, Johnson Space Center)
We show results from a large-scale numerical simulation of the orbital evolution of dust particles with diameters ranging in size from 10 to 500 microns, originating from several, discrete asteroidal sources. These results are used to demonstrate the link between the solar system dust bands discovered by IRAS and the recent catastrophic disruption of asteroids in the main belt. In particular, we show that two of the most prominent dust bands are debris left over from the collisional fragmentation of the progenitor bodies, probably "rubble-piles", that led to the creation of the Veritas family and the Karin cluster several million years ago. We are able to produce dust band models that are an excellent match to the IRAS observations, but only if we allow that we are observing very large particles that have migrated to the inner solar system due to Poynting-Robertson light drag. Thus, we are now observing only the small, tail-end of the original dust bands. It follows that the production of IDPs as a result of massive collisions in the asteroid belt is a highly stochastic process that must lead to very large variations in the cross-sectional area of material in the zodiacal cloud. Mature circumstellar, debris disks also produce dust particles as a result of the collisional evolution of their planetesimal populations and so these disks may also flare intermittently into visibility due to the associated increase in their optical depths. Insights gained from modeling the structure of the zodiacal cloud are applied to modeling the structure in the Beta Pictoris disk revealed recently by the mid-infrared observations of this disk obtained at the Gemini South Observatory using the TReCs camera.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #2
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.