A mapping approach to Hill's distant encounters: application to the stability of planetary embryos
Résumé
We derive mapping equations for Hill's problem in the case of encounter type solutions. By including high order terms in the expansion of the interaction as function of eccentricity and inclination, we reproduce the natural divergence during the encounter when the bodies come close to each other. We then apply the mapping approach to the study of the stability of a lattice of planetary embryos like those found at the end of the planetesimal accretion simulations. We recover the fact that the larger the number of embryos in the lattice, the higher the instability of the eccentricities. The stochasticity barrier we find shows that embryos located between Venus and the Earth with an eccentricity =~0.04 are unstable over 20 million years.