Suppression of extreme orbital evolution in triple systems with short-range forces

The secular evolution of hierarchical triple systems plays an important role in many astrophysical contexts, from irregular satellites of giant planets to high-eccentricity migration of hot Jupiters and the formation of compact stellar binaries. When the mutual inclination angle between the inner and outer orbits is sufficiently high, the inner pair can experience large-amplitude Lidov-Kozai oscillations in eccentricity and inclination. Recent work has shown that when the octupole terms are included in the interaction potential, the inner binary can undergo extreme eccentricity excitation as well as inclination flips with respect to the outer orbit. It has also been recognized that pericenter precession due to various short-range effects, such as General Relativ-ity and tidal and rotational distortions, can limit the growth of eccentricity and even suppress standard (quadrupolar) Lidov-Kozai oscillations. In this paper, we system-atically study how these short-range forces affect the extreme orbital behaviour found in octupole Lidov-Kozai cycles. In general, the influence of the octupole potential is confined to a range of initial mutual inclinations itot (the inclination angle between the