Kozai resonance model for Sagittarius A* stellar orbits

We study a possibility of tidal disruptions of stars orbiting a supermassive black hole due to eccentricity oscillations driven by Kozai's mechanism. We apply the model to conditions relevant for the Galactic Centre where we consider two different sources of the perturbation to the central potential, which trigger the resonance mechanism. Firstly, it is a disc of young massive stars orbiting Sgr A* at r ≳ 0.08 pc, and, secondly, a molecular circumnuclear disc. Each of the two possibilities appears to be capable of exciting eccentricities to values sufficient for the tidal disruption of ∼100 stars from the nuclear stellar cluster on a time-scale of 0.1-10 Myrs. Tidally disrupted stars may cause periods of increased accretion activity of Sgr A*.