The Eccentric Kozai Mechanism as a Potential Source of High Eccentricity Exocomets
- Young, Steven
Publication date
May 2023
DOIAbstract
Planetesimal belts in wide stellar binary systems can be perturbed by the distant companion star. One way this can manifest is if the companion star's orbit and the planetesimal belt are highly misaligned as this causes the belt objects to evolve to extremely high eccentricities (1-e<<1) on secular timescales. This means the planetesimals will reach very small pericentres and could be the source of close in dust seen in the light curves of some systems such as KIC 8462852 or 'Boyajian's star'. This poster illustrates work done to quantify how often planetesimals in belts that exist in wide binary systems should reach high eccentricities and whether this can explain the 1 star (KIC 8462852) seen with close in dust in the Kepler field
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