  In classical loss cone theory, stars are supplied to a central black hole via
gravitational scattering onto low angular momentum orbits. Higher feeding rates
are possible if the gravitational potential near the black hole is
non-axisymmetric and the orbits are chaotic. Motivated by recently published,
self-consistent models, we evaluate rates of stellar capture and disruption in
triaxial nuclei. Rates are found to substantially exceed those in
collisionally-resupplied loss cones, as long as an appreciable fraction of the
orbits are centrophilic. The mass captured by a black hole after a given time
in a steep nucleus scales as the fifth power of the velocity dispersion, and
the accumulated mass in 10^10 yr is of the correct order to reproduce the
M-sigma relation. Triaxiality can solve the "final parsec problem" of decaying
black hole binaries by increasing the flux of stars into the binary's loss
cone.

Astrophysics