It has been suggested that an intermediate-massive black hole ( IMBH ) with mass 10 ^ { 3 - 5 } ~ { } M _ { \odot } could fall into the galactic center ( GC ) and form a massive black hole binary ( MBHB ) with the central supermassive black hole , but current observations are not sensitive to constrain all mass and distance ranges .
Motivated by the recent discovery that MBHBs could enhance the rate of tidal-disruption events ( TDEs ) of stellar objects , we investigate the prospect of using stellar-disruption rate to probe IMBHs in the GC .
We incorporated the perturbation by an IMBH into the loss-cone theory and calculated the stellar-disruption rates in the GC .
We found that an IMBH heavier than 2000 ~ { } M _ { \odot } could distinguishably enhance the stellar-disruption rate .
By comparing observations of Sgr A* with the fall-back model for stellar debris , we suggested that the TDE rate in our Galaxy should not significantly exceed 0.002 { yr ^ { -1 } } , therefore a fraction of the parameter space for the IMBH , concentrating at the high-mass end , can already be excluded .
To derive constraint in the remaining parameter space , it is crucial to observationally confirm or reject the stellar-disruption rate between 10 ^ { -4 } and 10 ^ { -2 } ~ { } { yr ^ { -1 } } , and we discussed possible strategies to make such measurements .