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We identify a new secular instability of eccentric stellar disks aroundsupermassive black holes. We show that retrograde precession of the stellarorbits, due to the presence of a stellar cusp, induces coherent torques thatamplify deviations of individual orbital eccentricities from the average, andthus drive all eccentricities away from their initial value. We investigate theinstability using N-body simulations, and show that it can drive individualorbital eccentricities to significantly higher or lower values on the order ofa precession time-scale. This physics is relevant for the Galactic center,where massive stars are likely to form in eccentric disks around the SgrA*black hole. We show that the observed bimodal eccentricity distribution of diskstars in the Galactic center is in good agreement with the distributionresulting from the eccentricity instability and demonstrate how the dynamicalevolution of such a disk results in several of its stars acquiring high (1-e <0.1) orbital eccentricity. Binary stars on such highly eccentric orbits wouldget tidally disrupted by the SgrA* black hole, possibly producing both S-starsnear the black hole and high-velocity stars in the Galactic halo.

A New Secular Instability of Eccentric Stellar Disks Around Supermassive Black Holes, with Application to the Galactic Center