Long-Term Cycling of Kozai-Lidov Cycles: Extreme Eccentricities and Inclinations Excited by a Distant Eccentric Perturber

摘要

Kozai-Lidov oscillations of Jupiter-mass planets, excited by comparableplanetary or brown dwarf mass perturbers were recently shown in numericalexperiments to be slowly modulated and to exhibit striking features, includingextremely high eccentricities and the generation of retrograde orbits withrespect to the perturber. Here we solve this problem analytically for the caseof a test particle orbiting a host star and perturbed by a distant companionwhose orbit is eccentric and highly inclined. We give analytic expressions forthe conditions that produce retrograde orbits and high eccentricities. Thismechanism likely operates in various systems thought to involve Kozai-Lidovoscillations such as tight binaries, mergers of compact objects, irregularmoons of planets and many others. In particular, it could be responsible forexciting eccentricities and inclinations of exo-planetary orbits and beimportant for understanding the spin-orbit (mis)alignment of hot Jupiters.