Related papers: Initial accelerations of pulsars caused by externa…
A convincing explanation for the observed pulsar large peculiar velocities is still missing. We argue that any viable particle physics solution would most likely involve the resonant production of a non-interacting neutrino $\nu_s$ of mass…
RADIO pulsars are thought to born with spin periods of 0.02-0.5 s and space velocities of 100-1000 km/s, and they are inferred to have initial dipole magnetic fields of 10^{11}-10^{13}. The average space velocity of a normal star in the…
Observations of proper motions and their statistical analyses show that the predominant number of pulsars have velocities of the order of 200-250 km/sec. The pulsar population exhibits "asymmetric drift" in the Galaxy. Though there are…
Several mechanisms based on neutrino oscillations can explain the observed motions of pulsars if the magnetic field in their interiors is of order 10^{14}-10^{15} G.
We discuss a pulsar acceleration mechanism based on asymmetric neutrino emission from the direct quark Urca process in the interior of proto neutron stars. The anisotropy is caused by a strong magnetic field which polarises the spin of the…
We derive the energy asymmetry given the proto-neutron star during the time when the neutrino sphere is near the surface of the proto-neutron star, using the modified URCA process. The electrons produced with the anti-neutrinos are in…
We suggest that neutron stars experienced at birth three related physical changes, which may originate in magneto-rotational instabilities: (i) an increase in period from the initial value P_0 to the current value P_s, implying a change of…
We have recently proposed an explanation for the birth velocities of pulsars as resulting from asymmetries due to neutrino oscillations in the cooling protoneutron star. A specific prediction of this mechanism is that the correlation of…
The observed velocities of radio pulsars, which range in the hundreds kilometers per second, and many of which exceed 1000 km/s, are not explained by the standard physics of the supernova explosion. However, if a sterile neutrino with mass…
We analyse the sample of pulsar proper motions, taking detailed account of the selection effects of the original surveys. We treat censored data using survival statistics. From a comparison of our results with Monte Carlo simulations, we…
Shortly after the discovery of the binary system PSR J0737-3039 we predicted that it has a small proper motion and suggested that this implies that the progenitor mass of the younger pulsar (B) must be around 1.45M_sun. This is in…
There is growing evidence that two classes of high-energy sources, the Soft Gamma Repeaters and the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars contain slowly spinning ``magnetars'', i.e. neutron stars whose emission is powered by the release of energy from…
Soft Gamma Repeaters and the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars are believed to contain slowly spinning "magnetars". The enormous energy liberated in the 2004 Dece 27 giant flare from SGR 1806-20, together with the likely recurrence time of such…
Neutron stars (NSs) are thought to receive natal kicks at their formation in supernovae. In order to investigate the magnitude of these kicks, we analyze the proper motions and distance estimates -- either through parallax or dispersion…
Based on the rate of change of its orbital period, PSR J2043+1711 has a substantial peculiar acceleration of 3.5 $\pm$ 0.8 mm/s/yr, which deviates from the acceleration predicted by equilibrium Milky Way models at a $4\sigma$ level. The…
Evolutionary scenarios suggest that the progenitor of the new binary pulsar J0737-3039B \cite{ref1,ref2} was a He-star with $M > 2.1-2.3~\Ms$ \cite{ref3,ref4}. We show that this case implies that the binary must have a large ($>120$ km/s)…
A typical young pulsar slows down at an imperceptible rate, its spin period increasing by less than 10 microseconds over the course of a year. However, the inertia of a pulsar is so extreme that to effect this tiny change in rotation rate,…
This paper suggests the idea that all neutron stars experienced at birth an ultrafast decay of their magnetic fields from their initial values to their current surface values. If the electromagnetic energy radiated during this field decay…
We study implications for the apparent alignment of the spin axes, proper-motions, and polarization vectors of the Crab and Vela pulsars. The spin axes are deduced from recent Chandra X-ray Observatory images that reveal jets and nebular…
Recent proper motion and parallax measurements for the pulsar PSR B1508+55 indicate a transverse velocity of ~1100 km/s, which exceeds earlier measurements for any neutron star. The spin-down characteristics of PSR B1508+55 are typical for…