We investigated the population of asteroids in comet-like orbits using available asteroid size and albedo catalogs of data taken with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite , AKARI , and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer on the basis of their orbital properties ( i.e. , the Tisserand parameter with respect to Jupiter , T _ { \mathrm { J } } , and the aphelion distance , Q ) .
We found that ( i ) there are 123 asteroids in comet-like orbits by our criteria ( i.e. , Q < 4.5 AU and T _ { \mathrm { J } } < 3 ) , ( ii ) 80 % of them have low albedo , p _ { \mathrm { v } } < 0.1 , consistent with comet nuclei , ( iii ) low-albedo objects among them have a size distribution shallower than that of active comet nuclei , that is , the power index of the cumulative size distribution of around 1.1 , ( iv ) unexpectedly , a considerable number ( i.e. , 25 by our criteria ) of asteroids in comet-like orbits have high albedo , p _ { \mathrm { v } } > 0.1 .
We noticed that such high-albedo objects mostly consist of small ( D < 3 km ) bodies distributed in near-Earth space ( with perihelion distance of q < 1.3 AU ) .
We suggest that such high-albedo , small objects were susceptible to the Yarkovsky effect and drifted into comet-like orbits via chaotic resonances with planets .