Multifractal fits to the observed main belt asteroid distribution

Author(s): Bagatin, AC; Martinez, VJ; Paredes, S

Source: ICARUS  Volume: 157   Issue: 2   Pages: 549-553   DOI: 10.1006/icar.2002.6826   Published: JUN 2002

Dohnanyi’s (J. W. Dohnanyi, 1969, J. Geophys. Res. 74, 253 12554) theory predicts that a collisional system such as the asteroidal population of the main belt should rapidly relax to a power-law stationary size distribution of the kind N(m) alpha m(-alpha), with alpha very close to 11/6, provided all the collisional response parameters are independent of size. The actual asteroid belt distribution at observable sizes, instead, does not exhibit such a simple fractal size distribution. We investigate in this work the possibility that the corresponding cumulative distribution may be instead fairly fitted by multifractal distributions. This multifractal behavior, in contrast with the Dohnanyi fractal distribution, is related to the release of his hypothesis of self-similarity. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).