Escape of particles orbiting asteroids in the presence of radiation pressure through separatrix splitting (Q1373176)

The dynamics of small grains orbiting minor planets in the asteroid belt is investigated. The problem takes into account the gravitational attraction of the Sun and the asteroid to the grain, and the influence of the radiation pressure from the Sun is also considered. The Hamiltonian of the restricted three-body problem including the radiation force is written in the form of a nearly-integrable system of three degrees of freedom. The structure of the phase space of the integrable part is studied, and the existence of a four-dimensional normally hyperbolic invariant manifold with a smooth five-dimensional homoclinic surface is confirmed. The existence of transverse intersections of the perturbed stable and unstable manifolds is numerically checked, and thus the appearance of homoclinic tangles is considered as a strong indication of Arnold diffusion. For the case of a grain orbiting Eros, it is estimated that an \(O(1)\) change in the action, resulting to the depletion of the orbiting grains, corresponds to a time scale of hundreds of years which is very short compared to the age of the the Solar system.