On stable chaos in the asteroid belt

The twenty most chaotic objects found among first hundred of numbered aster oids are studied. Lyapunov time calculated with and without inner planets i ndicates that for eleven of those asteroids the strongest chaotic effect re sults from the resonances with Mars. The filtered semimajor axis displays a n abrupt variation only when a close approach to Mars takes place. The stud y of the behaviour of the critical argument for candidate resonances can re veal which is responsible for the semimajor axis variation. We have determi ned these resonances for the asteroids in question. For the asteroids chaot ic even without the inner planets we have determined the most important res onances with Jupiter, or three-body resonances.