Mercury and OrbFit packages for the numerical integration of planetary systems: implementation of the Yarkovsky and YORP effects

Abstract

For studies of the long-term evolution of small Solar System objects, it is fundamental to add the Yarkovsky and Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effects in the dynamical model. Still, implementations of these effects in publicly available N -body codes is often lacking, or the effects are implemented using significantly simplified models. In this paper, we present an implementation of the coupled Yarkovsky/YORP effects in the mercury and orbfit N -body codes. Along with these two effects, we also included the effects of non-destructive collisions and rotationally induced breakups to model the asteroid spin state properly. Given the stochastic nature of many incorporated effects, the software is suitable for statistical dynamical studies. Here we explained the scientific aspect of the implementation, while technical details will be made freely available along with the source codes.