  Close tidal interactions of stars with a central massive black hole (MBH) or
with other stars in the high density cusp around it can affect a significant
fraction of the stellar population within the MBH radius of influence. We
consider three strong processes that have the potential of modifying stellar
structure and evolution there. (1) Tidal spin-up by hyperbolic star-star
encounters. (2) Tidal scattering of stars on the MBH. (3) Tidal heating of
inspiraling stars - "squeezars" - that were tidally captured by the MBH. We
discuss the implications for stellar populations near MBHs and for the growth
of MBHs by tidal disruption of stars, and the possible observational signature
of such processes near the MBH in the Galactic Center. We compare the event
rates of prompt tidal encounters (tidal disruption and tidal scattering) and
slow inspiral events (squeezars / tidal capture), and find that tidal capture
is at least an order of magnitude less efficient than prompt disruption. This
means that past studies, which assigned similar weights to prompt disruption
and tidal capture, over-estimated the contribution of tidal disruption to the
growth of the MBH by at least a factor of two.
