2013MNRAS.429.3040L

We consider the long-term tidal heating of a star by the supermassive black hole at the Galactic centre, SgrA*. We show that gravitational interaction with background stars leads to a linear growth of the tidal excitation energy with the number of pericentre passages near SgrA*. The accumulated heat deposited by excitation of modes within the star over many pericentre passages can lead to a runaway disruption of the star at a pericentre distance that is four to five times farther than the standard tidal disruption radius. The accumulated heating may explain the lack of massive ( ≳ 10M☉) S-stars closer than several tens of au from SgrA*.