Origin of neutron star birth kicks and spins · revision history

Revision 2

Accepted · core change · record

Changes against revision 1:

Title
Origin of neutron star birth kicks and spins
Plain
Neutron stars are born moving hundreds of times faster than a rifle bullet and spinning, possibly because the explosion is lopsided.
Precise · changed · core
Revision 1: Determine whether asymmetric mass ejection (gravitational tug of slow ejecta) and anisotropic neutrino emission in 3D explosions reproduce the pulsar velocity distribution (mean $\sim 4e7\ \mathrm{cm/s}$, tail above 1e8 cm/s), birth spin periods (tens to hundreds of ms) and any spin-kick alignment. Answer: predicted distributions from simulation suites compared with pulsar proper motions.
Revision 2: Determine whether asymmetric mass ejection (gravitational tug of slow ejecta) and anisotropic neutrino emission in 3D explosions reproduce the pulsar velocity distribution (mean $\sim 4 \times 10^{7}\ \mathrm{cm/s}$, tail above $10^{8}$ cm/s), birth spin periods (tens to hundreds of ms) and any spin-kick alignment. Answer: predicted distributions from simulation suites compared with pulsar proper motions.
Settled by
Simulated kick and spin distributions statistically matching pulsar data, and remnant ejecta asymmetries (for example Ti-44 maps) correlated with kick direction.
Kind
well-posed
Answer type
mechanism
References
(empty)
Literature status
partially-resolved
Status note
(empty)
Posed since
(empty)

Decisions