Resonant relaxation (RR) of orbital angular momenta occurs near
massive black holes (MBHs) where the stellar orbits are nearly
Keplerian and so do not precess significantly. The resulting
coherent torques efficiently change the magnitude of the
angular momenta and rotate the orbital inclination in all
directions. As a result, many of the tightly bound stars very near the
MBH are rapidly destroyed by falling into the MBH on low-angular
momentum orbits, while the orbits of the remaining stars are
efficiently randomized. We solve numerically the Fokker-Planck
equation in energy for the steady state distribution of a single mass
population with a RR sink term. We find that the steady state current
of stars, which sustains the accelerated drainage close to the MBH,
can be ≤10 larger than that due to non-coherent
2-body relaxation alone. RR mostly affects tightly bound stars, and so
it increases only moderately the total tidal disruption rate, which is
dominated by stars originating from less bound orbits farther away.
We show that the event rate of gravitational wave (GW) emission from
inspiraling stars, originating much closer to the MBH, is dominated by
RR dynamics. The GW event rate depends on the uncertain efficiency of
RR. The efficiency indicated by the few available simulations implies
rates ≤10 times higher than those predicted by 2-body
relaxation, which would improve the prospects of detecting such events
by future GW detectors, such as LISA. However, a higher, but
still plausible RR efficiency can lead to the drainage of all tightly
bound stars and strong suppression of GW events from inspiraling
stars. We apply our results to the Galactic MBH, and show that the
observed dynamical properties of stars there are consistent with RR.