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KIC 8462852 is a star in the Kepler field that exhibits almost uniquebehaviour. The deep, irregular and aperiodic dips in its light curve have beeninterpreted as the breakup of a large exocomet on a highly eccentric orbitwhose post-disruption material obscures the star. It is hypothesised that anearby M-dwarf, recently confirmed to be bound to the system, could be excitingplanetesimals in a source belt to high eccentricities if its orbit is highlymisaligned with the belt: an effect known as the 'Eccentric Kozai-LidovMechanism'. To quantify how often this effect is expected to occur, this paperpresents a Monte Carlo model of wide binary stars with embedded, misalignedplanetesimal belts. These belts collisionally erode over time until they areexcited to high eccentricities on secular timescales by a companion star if itsorbit is sufficiently misaligned. The large planetesimals then produce anobservable dimming signature in the light curve for a set period of time whichmay or may not overlap with similar events. The model finds that, for dimmingevents that persist for 100 yr, the most likely companion stars are located at$10^2 - 10^4$ au, the most likely belts are at $10^2-10^3$ au and the systemage is most likely to be $10^2 - 10^3$ Myr. However, the probability ofobserving one or more stars exhibiting this phenomenon in the Kepler field is$1.3 \times 10^{-3}$, such that it is unlikely this mechanism is driving theobservations of KIC 8462852.

The Eccentric Kozai-Lidov Mechanism as the Cause of Exocomet Transits of KIC 8462852