We show that collisions with stellar-mass black holes can partially
explain the absence of bright giant stars in the Galactic Centre, first
noted by Genzel et al, 1996. We show that the missing objects are
low-mass giants and AGB stars in the range 1-3 M_o. Using
detailed stellar evolution calculations, we find that to prevent these
objects from evolving to become visible in the depleted K bands, we
require that they suffer collisions on the red giant branch, and we
calculate the fractional envelope mass losses required. Using a
combination of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic calculations, restricted
three-body analysis and Monte Carlo simulations, we compute the expected
collision rates between giants and black holes, and between giants and
main-sequence stars in the Galactic Centre. We show that collisions can
plausibly explain the missing giants in the 10.5
Preprints available from the authors at jim@ig.cas.cz
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