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

The very long-term evolution of the hierarchical restricted three-body problem is calculated analytically for high inclinations. The Kozai-Lidov Cycles (KLCs) slowly evolve due to the octupole term in the perturber’s potential and exhibit striking features, including extremely high eccentricities and the generation of retrograde orbits with respect to the perturber. These features were found in recent numerical experiments of the nonrestricted three-body problem and were attributed inaccurately to the comparable and low masses of the two orbiting companions. Our calculation is done by averaging for the first time the double averaged secular equations of motion over the KLCs and finding a new constant of the motion. These very long-term effects are likely to be important in various astrophysical systems thought to involve KLCs, such as hot Jupiters, irregular moons of planets, and many others.