The inspiral of a turbulent molecular cloud in the Galactic centre may result in the formation of a small , dense and moderately eccentric gas disc around the supermassive black hole ( SMBH ) .
Such a disc is unstable to fragmentation and may lead to the formation of young massive stars in the central parsec of the Galaxy .
Here we perform high-accuracy direct summation N -body simulations of a ring of massive stars ( with initial semi-major axes 0.1 \leq { } a / { pc } \leq { } 0.4 and eccentricities 0.2 \leq { } e \leq { } 0.4 ) , subject to the potential of the SMBH , a stellar cusp , and the parent gas disc , to study how the orbital elements of the ring evolve in time .
The initial conditions for the stellar ring are drawn from the results of previous simulations of molecular cloud infall and disruption in the SMBH potential .
While semi-major axes do not evolve significantly , the distribution of eccentricities spreads out very fast ( \approx 1 { Myr } ) as a consequence of cusp precession .
In particular , stellar orbits with initial eccentricity e > 0.3 ( e < 0.3 ) tend to become even more ( less ) eccentric , resulting in a bimodal eccentricity distribution .
The distribution is qualitatively consistent with that of the massive stars observed in the Galactic centre ’ s clockwise disc .