Related papers: Pulsar Spin--Velocity Alignment: Further Results a…
It is thought that isolated neutron stars receive a natal kick velocity at birth nearly aligned with their spin axis. Direct observational confirmation of this alignment is currently limited to a single source in a supernova remnant (PSR…
We present strong observational evidence for a relationship between the direction of a pulsar's motion and its rotation axis. We show carefully calibrated polarization data for 25 pulsars, 20 of which display linearly polarized emission…
The role of binary progenitors of neutron stars in the apparent distribution of space velocities and spin-velocity alignment observed in young pulsars is studied. A Monte-Carlo synthesis of pulsar population from single and binary stars…
This paper presents a detailed investigation of the dependence of pulsar spin-velocity alignment, which has been observed for a sample of 58 pulsars, on pulsar age. At first, our study considers only pulsar characteristic ages, resulting in…
The speeds of young isolated pulsars are generally inferred from their observed 2-d velocities on the plane of the sky under the assumption that the unobserved radial velocity is not special, i.e., that the measured 2-d velocity is an…
More than 50 years after the discovery of pulsars and confirmation of their association with supernova explosions, the origin of the initial spin and velocity of pulsars remains largely a mystery. The typical space velocities of several…
Quantifying the natal kick distribution of pulsars is essential for understanding supernova physics and binary evolution, yet measurements are historically limited by the lack of radial velocity data. Most previous studies rely on…
We have conducted observations of 22 pulsars at frequencies of 0.7, 1.4 and 3.1 GHz and present their polarization profiles. The observations were carried out for two main purposes. First we compare the orientation of the spin and velocity…
Recent observations of pulsar wind nebulae and radio polarization profiles revealed a tendency of the alignment between the spin and velocity directions in neutron stars. We study the condition for spin-kick alignment using a toy model, in…
It has been noted that the Crab and Vela pulsar proper motions lie along the symmetry axes of their wind nebulae. In an effort to promote this observation to a serious test of kick physics, we are using CXO images and other data to estimate…
Evidence from pulsar wind nebula symmetry axes and radio polarization observations suggests that pulsar motions correlate with the spin directions. We assemble this evidence for young isolated pulsars and show how it can be used to…
We study observational constraints on neutron star (NS) kicks for isolated pulsars and for neutron stars in binary systems. We are particularly interested in the evidence of kick-spin alignment/misalignment and its dependence on the neutron…
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…
A statistical model of the polarization of pulsar radio emission is used to derive the general statistics of a polarization vector's orientation angles. The theoretical distributions are compared with orientation angle histograms computed…
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…
The angle between the stellar spin-axis and the orbital plane of a stellar or planetary companion has important implications for the formation and evolution of such systems. A study by Hale (1994) found that binaries with separations $a <…
Using pulsewidth data for 872 isolated radio pulsars we test the hypothesis that pulsars evolve through a progressive narrowing of the emission cone combined with progressive alignment of the spin and magnetic axes. The new data provide…
Two entwined problems have remained unresolved since pulsars were discovered nearly 50 years ago: the orientation of their polarized emission relative to the emitting magnetic field and the direction of putative supernova ``kicks' relative…
We analyze spectroscopic and photometric data to determine the projected inclinations of stars in 11 open clusters, placing constraints on the spin-axis distributions of six clusters. We combine these results with four additional clusters…
For 61 transiting hot Jupiters, the projection of the angle between the orbital plane and the stellar equator (called the spin-orbit angle) has been measured. For about half of them, a significant misalignment is detected, and retrograde…