Relativistic capture and tidal disruption around a spinning black hole depend on both the magnitude and direction of the star's angular momentum, yet loss-cone models often assume fixed orbital inclinations by ignoring the associated diffusion. We show that this is not justified: for isotropic two-body relaxation near a small loss threshold, angular-momentum magnitude L and inclination x=Lz/L diffuse on comparable timescales, tE≫tL∼tx
Nearby in the stack
. For Kerr capture, retaining inclination diffusion significantly amplifies the prograde--retrograde contrast while leaving the total inclination-integrated flux nearly unchanged. An almost correct integrated flux can hide a badly wrong angular distribution. The three-dimensional diffusion problem nevertheless retains enough angular structure to permit analytic treatment. By representing pericenter removal as a continuous sink, we obtain a closed-form loss flux solution for a nearly linear Kerr tidal-disruption boundary, finding close agreement with phase-resolved calculations. Inclination-dependent loss therefore requires inclination-resolved diffusion even when integrated rates appear robust.
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