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It's not the Yarkovsky effect. The Yarkovsky effect is where a body emits photons (which have momentum, and therefore change the momentum of the emitting body).

This idea is using incoming photons to heat the body to the point where it vaporizes part of the surface. The emitted atoms have momentum.

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So you don't see any similarities?

very tangential similarity that photons have momentum, and so impart a force on massive object. But it's also confusing compared to this, because photons are heating the substance (which actually would impart an opposing momentum), to "boil" it, to use kinetic forces to push in the desired direction. I appreciate the link but I don't think the effects are that similar.

So if an orbit brought an asteroid close enough to a star to have this effect on the surface of an asteroid, you would consider it an entirely different phenomenon?

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