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The Kozai mechanism (or see below for other names in use) is a type of effect on a body's orbit by another body orbiting further from the primary body causing a secular cycle of oscillations between more orbital inclination and more eccentricity, termed a Kozai oscillation or Kozai cycle. For example, the Moon could affect an artificial satellite also orbiting Earth by the mechanism. The mechanism is significant for some asteroids, moons, and extra-solar planets.
The effect was described by Soviet, Michael Lidov in 1961 and Japanese, Yoshihide Kozai in 1962, and has since been identified in the earlier 20th-century work of Swedish astrophysicist, Edvard Hugo von Zeipel, and is now referred to with a variety of phrases: Lidov-Kozai mechanism, LK mechanism, Zeipel-Lidov-Kozai mechanism, (or effect rather than mechanism), abbreviated ZLK, but often the names or initials are listed in a different order, such as Kozai-Lidov and ZKL.