  A star wandering close enough to a massive black hole (MBH) can be ripped
apart by the tidal forces of the black hole. The advent of wide-field surveys
at many wavelengths has quickly increased the number of tidal disruption events
(TDEs) observed, and has revealed that i) observed TDE rates are lower than
theoretical predictions and ii) E+A galaxies are significantly overrepresented.
This overrepresentation further worsens the tension between observed and
theoretically predicted TDEs for non-E+A galaxies. Classical loss cone theory
focuses on the cumulative effect of many weak scatterings. However, a strong
scattering can remove a star from the distribution before it can get tidally
disrupted. Most stars undergoing TDEs come from within the radius of influence,
the densest environments of the universe. In such environments, close
encounters rare elsewhere become non-negligible. We revise the standard loss
cone theory to take into account classical two-body interactions as well as
strong scattering, collisions, tidal captures, and study under which conditions
close encounters can shield the loss cone. We i) analytically derive the impact
of strong scattering and other close encounters, ii) compute time-dependent
loss cone dynamics including both weak and strong encounters, and iii) derive
analytical solutions to the Fokker-Planck equation with strong scattering. We
find that i) TDE rates can be reduced to up to an order of magnitude and ii)
strong shielding preferentially reduces deeply plunging stars. We also show
that stellar overdensities, one possible explanation for the E+A preference,
can fail to increase TDE rates when taking into account strong scattering.
