Observational Constraints on Kicks in Supernovae
Astrophysics
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
The absence or presence of extremely wide binaries with a radio pulsar and an optical counterpart imposes a strong constraint on the existence and magnitude of kicks in supernova explosions. We search for such systems by comparing the positions of radio pulsars which are not known to be in binaries with the positions of visible stars, and find that the number of associations is negligible. According to the performed population synthesis, this implies that kicks must occur, with a lower limit of at least 10 to 20 km/s.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9709207,
title = {Observational Constraints on Kicks in Supernovae},
author = {Simon Portegies Zwart and Marco Kouwenhoven and Alastair Reynolds},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9709207},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
4 pages including 2 figs., LaTeX. To appear in A&A letters