Related papers: Pulsar kicks from neutrino oscillations
Core-collapse supernovae are the terminal explosions of massive stars. After successive phases of nuclear fusion proceeding up to silicon burning, these stars form an iron core that is supported by electron degeneracy pressure. The core…
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars that are renowned for their timing precision, although glitches can interrupt the regular timing behavior when these stars are young. Glitches are thought to be caused by interactions between normal and…
Recent results from the PAMELA satellite indicate the presence of a large flux of positrons (relative to electrons) in the cosmic ray spectrum between approximately 10 and 100 GeV. As annihilating dark matter particles in many models are…
Direct detection of light dark matter can be significantly enhanced by up-scattering of dark matter with energetic particles in the cosmic ambient. This boosted dark matter flux can reach kinetic energies up to tens of MeV, while the…
A recent study shows that gravitational scattering of dark matter, in the form of massive objects with mass $m \sim 10^3-10^4M_{\odot}$, could provide a possible solution to alleviate the small-scale structure problems of cold dark matter.…
Pulsars are wonderful gravitational probes. Their tiny size and stellar mass give their rotation periods a stablility comparable to that of atomic frequency standards. This is especially true of the rapidly rotating "millisecond pulsars"…
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…
Neutron stars receive velocity kicks at birth in supernovae. Those formed in electron-capture supernovae from super asymptotic giant branch stars -- the lowest mass stars to end their lives in supernovae -- may receive significantly lower…
A nearby supernova will carry an unprecedented wealth of information about astrophysics, nuclear physics, and particle physics. Because supernova are fundamentally neutrino driven phenomenon, our knowledge about neutrinos -- particles that…
We examine available observations on pulsars for evidence pertaining to mechanisms proposed to explain the origin of their velocities. We find that mechanisms predicting a correlation between the rotation axis and the pulsar velocity are…
A localized wave packet exhibits under certain conditions zitterbewegung. A similar phenomenon occurs for the chirality of a massive particle. In the case of massive neutrinos, since they are detected via the V-A weak charged currents, this…
If core collapse leads to the formation of a rapidly rotating bar-unstable proto-neutron star surrounded by fall-back material, then we might expect it to cool and fragment to form a double (proto)-neutron star binary into a super-close…
In the currently accepted paradigm, dark matter is hypothesized as an explanation of the flat rotation curves of galaxies under the assumption of virialized orbits. The use of millisecond pulsar timing as a probe of Galactic dark matter…
The recent global fit of short baseline neutrino oscillation data favors the presence of one (or more) sterile neutrino state which leads to new mass splitting \Delta m^2 ~1 eV^2. We consider the effect of this new states on the evolution…
Neutrinos do oscillate, which up to our best knowledge implies that they are massive particles. As such, neutrinos should interact with gravitational fields. As their masses are tiny, the gravitational fields must be extremely strong. In…
In proto-neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, the cross section for $\nu_e$ ($\bar\nu_e$) absorption on neutrons (protons) depends on the local magnetic field strength due to the quantization of energy levels for the $e^-$ ($e^+$)…
It has been hypothesized recently that core collapse supernovae are triggered by mildly relativistic jets following observations of radio properties of these explosions. Association of a jet, similar to a gamma-ray burst jet but only…
The jets associated with Galactic micro-quasars are believed to be ejected by accreting stellar mass black-holes or neutron stars. We show that if the energy content of the jets in the transient sources is dominated by electron-proton…
Massive stars (M> 10Msun) end their lives with spectacular explosions due to gravitational collapse. The collapse turns the stars into compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes with the ejection of cosmic rays and heavy…
The next galactic core-collapse supernova will deliver a wealth of neutrinos which for the first time we are well-situated to measure. These explosions produce neutrinos with energies between 10 and 100 MeV over a period of tens of seconds.…