THE MEAN MOTION RESONANCE OF THE KUIPER BELT OBJECTS

The movements of the asteroids in the Kuiper belt are important for us to understand the origin and the evolution of the solar system. Since the Kuiper belt objects (KBO) are a short distance to the Neptune of a great mass, the KBOs are significantly perturbed by Neptune's gravity. In this paper, we focus on two main families: the resonant and the scattered KBOs. The mean motion resonance can prevent the resonant KBOs from a close encounter with the Neptune. Thus most resonant KBOs are stable on their orbits. Here we mainly investigate the resonance width and strength of different resonant ratios with a high eccentricity. As for the scattered KBOs, their evolution is affected jointly by the resonance sticking and the resonance scattering. Here we are mainly concerned with the problem why there are a high number of KBOs in the scattered disc.