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Kozai-Lidov (KL) oscillations can accelerate compact object mergers viagravitational wave (GW) radiation by driving the inner binaries of hierarchicaltriples to high eccentricities. We perform direct three-body integrations ofhigh mass ratio compact object triple systems using Fewbody includingpost-Newtonian terms. We find that the inner binary undergoes rapideccentricity oscillations (REOs) on the timescale of the outer orbital periodwhich drive it to higher eccentricities than secular theory would otherwisepredict, resulting in substantially reduced merger times. For a uniformdistribution of tertiary eccentricity ($e_2$), ~40% of systems merge within~1-2 eccentric KL timescales whereas secular theory predicts that only ~20% ofsuch systems merge that rapidly. This discrepancy becomes especially pronouncedat low $e_2$, with secular theory overpredicting the merger time by many ordersof magnitude. We show that a non-negligible fraction of systems haveeccentricity > 0.8 when they merge, in contrast to predictions from seculartheory. Our results are applicable to high mass ratio triple systems containingblack holes or neutron stars. In objects in which tidal effects are important,such as white dwarfs, stars, and planets, REOs can reduce the tidalcircularization timescale by an order of magnitude and bring the components ofthe inner binary into closer orbits than would be possible in the secularapproximation.

Rapid Eccentricity Oscillations and the Mergers of Compact Objects in Hierarchical Triples