Physical properties of L-type asteroids: a link to the primordial Solar System?

A few years ago, asteroid polarimetry allowed to discover a class of asteroids exhibiting peculiar phase polarization curves, collectively called "Barbarians" from the prototype of this class, the asteroid (234) Barbara. All such objects belong to the L visible plus near infrared based taxonomic class. The anomalous polarization has been tentatively interpreted in terms of high-albedo, spinel-rich Calcium-Aluminum inclusions (CAI) that could be abundant on the surfaces of some of these asteroids, according to their spectral reflectance properties and to analogies with CO3/CV3 meteorites. Such CAIs are among the oldest mineral assemblages ever found in the Solar System. Barbarians' surfaces could therefore be rich in this very ancient material and bring information on the early phases of planetary formation.

During this thesis, a systematic campaign for photometric, polarimetric and spectroscopic characterization has been conducted. These observation campaigns allowed improving our general knowledge about these peculiar asteroids and highlighting the link between polarization and polarimetric properties. Our observation also allowed discarding the hypotheses involving peculiar shape for these asteroids. However, as it was suggested, a link between the presence of CAI and the polarimetric response was found. Our observations show that the relative abundance of CAI is correlated with the polarimetric inversion angle. This is the first time that a direct link between polarimetric and spectroscopic properties is found.