The observed velocity distribution of young pulsars II: analysis of complete PSR$\pi$

Abstract

Understanding the natal kicks, or birth velocities, of neutron stars are essential for understanding the evolution of massive binaries as well as double neutron star formation. We use maximum likelihood methods as published in Verbunt et al. to analyse a new large dataset of parallaxes and proper motions measured by Deller et al. This sample is roughly three times larger than number of measurements available before. For both the complete sample and its younger part (spin-down ages $\tau <3$ Myr), we find that a bimodal Maxwellian distribution describes the measured parallaxes and proper motions better than a single Maxwellian with probability of 99.3 and 95.0 per cent respectively. The bimodal Maxwellian distribution has three parameters: fraction of low-velocity pulsars and distribution parameters ${\sigma }_1$ and ${\sigma }_2$ for low and high-velocity modes. For a complete sample, these parameters are as follows: $42_{-15}^{+17}$ per cent, ${\sigma }_1=128_{-18}^{+22}$ km s${}^{-1}$ and ${\sigma }_2=298\pm 28$ km s${}^{-1}$. For younger pulsars, which are assumed to represent the natal kick, these parameters are as follows: $20_{-10}^{+11}$ per cent, ${\sigma }_1=56_{-15}^{+25}$ km s${}^{-1}$ and ${\sigma }_2=336\pm 45$ km s${}^{-1}$. In the young population, $5\pm 3$ per cent of pulsars has velocities less than 60 km s${}^{-1}$. We perform multiple Monte Carlo tests for the method taking into account realistic observational selection. We find that the method reliably estimates all parameters of the natal kick distribution. Results of the velocity analysis are weakly sensitive to the exact values of scale-lengths of the Galactic pulsar distribution.

13 pages, 14 figures. Accepted to the MNRAS 2020 April 2

References in corpus (15)

• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: VI. Discovery and timing of 142 pulsars and a Galactic population analysis
• On Pulsar Distance Measurements and their Uncertainties
• The observed velocity distribution of young pulsars
• Pulsar Parallaxes at 5 GHz with the Very Long Baseline Array
• On the Progenitor of Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817
• Comparing Neutron Star Kicks to Supernova Remnant Asymmetries
• Revisiting the birth locations of pulsars B1929+10, B2020+28,and B2021+51
• Post fall-back evolution of multipolar magnetic fields and radio pulsar activation
• Wide binary companions to massive stars and their use in constraining natal kicks
• Pulsar spin-velocity alignment from single and binary neutron star progenitors
• Settling accretion on to isolated neutron stars from interstellar medium
• A new look at distances and velocities of neutron stars

Cited by in corpus (54)

• Impact of Massive Binary Star and Cosmic Evolution on Gravitational Wave Observations I: Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers
• Stellar triples on the edge; Comprehensive overview of the evolution of destabilised triples leading to stellar and binary exotica
• Evidence for an abundant old population of Galactic ultra long period magnetars and implications for fast radio bursts
• Compact Binary Coalescences: Astrophysical Processes and Lessons Learned
• Combined analysis of neutron star natal kicks using proper motions and parallax measurements for radio pulsars and Be X-ray binaries
• Interplay Between Neutrino Kicks and Hydrodynamic Kicks of Neutron Stars and Black Holes
• Evidence for mass-dependent peculiar velocities in compact object binaries: Towards better constraints on natal kicks
• An Observationally-Derived Kick Distribution for Neutron Stars in Binary Systems
• Calibration of neutron star natal kick velocities to isolated pulsar observations
• Testing the fossil field hypothesis: could strongly magnetised OB stars produce all known magnetars?
• Constraints to neutron-star kicks in High-Mass X-ray Binaries with Gaia EDR3
• Planet Hunters TESS IV: A massive, compact hierarchical triple star system TIC 470710327
• The Kick Velocity Distribution of Isolated Neutron Stars
• Where are the magnetar binary companions? Candidates from a comparison with binary population synthesis predictions
• Hyper-runaway and hypervelocity white dwarf candidates in \textit{Gaia} Data Release 3: possible remnants from Ia/Iax supernova explosions or dynamical encounters
• Braking indices of young radio pulsars: theoretical perspective
• The Galactic Underworld: The spatial distribution of compact remnants
• A pulsar-helium star compact binary system formed by common envelope evolution
• Gamma-ray halos around pulsars: impact on pulsar wind physics and galactic cosmic ray transport
• Populations of evolved massive binary stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud I: Predictions from detailed evolution models
• The Proper Motion of the Pulsar J1124-5916 in the Galactic Supernova Remnant G292.0+1.8
• Deceleration of kicked objects due to the Galactic potential
• The rocket effect mechanism in neutron stars in supernova remnants
• Analyzing the Galactic pulsar distribution with machine learning
• The origin of the high-mass X-ray binary 4U 2206+54/BD +53 2790
• Isolated pulsar population synthesis with simulation-based inference
• Kinematic constraints on the ages and kick velocities of Galactic neutron star binaries
• Pulsar wind nebulae of runaway massive stars
• Neutron star kicks plus rockets as a mechanism for forming wide low-eccentricity neutron star binaries
• Observing the Galactic Underworld: Predicting photometry and astrometry from compact remnant microlensing events
• The impact of spin-kick alignment on the inferred velocity distribution of isolated pulsars
• A Catalog of Pulsar X-ray Filaments
• Wide binary pulsars from electron-capture supernovae
• Searching for ejected supernova companions in the era of precise proper motion and radial velocity measurements
• A kinematically constrained kick distribution for isolated neutron stars
• The Spatial Correlation of High Mass X-ray Binaries and Young Star Clusters in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies
• Revisiting Pulsar Velocities Using Gaia Data Release 2
• On the spin period distribution of millisecond pulsars
• Natal kicks of compact objects
• Updated Proper Motion of the Neutron Star in the Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A
• The Location of Young Pulsar PSR J0837$-$2454: Galactic Halo or Local Supernova Remnant?
• Evidence for the spin-kick alignment of pulsars from the statistics of their magnetic inclinations
• The environment of TeV halo progenitors
• Radio pulsar population synthesis with consistent flux measurements using simulation-based inference
• Pulsar Population Synthesis with Magnetorotational Evolution: Constraining the Decay of Magnetic field
• The systemic recoil velocity distribution and the scale height of field millisecond pulsar systems: Implications on neutron star retention fractions in star clusters
• First detection of X-ray pulsations and spectrum of the high Galactic latitude pulsar PSR J0837-2454 and direct Urca cooling implications
• On Neutron Star Natal Kicks in High-Mass X-Ray Binaries: Insights from Population Synthesis
• Tiny-Scale Properties within the Interstellar Medium towards PSR J1644$-$4559: I. Observational Evidence of Turbulence-induced Tiny Scale Atomic Structures
• Astrometric microlensing probes of the isolated neutron star population with Roman
• X-ray observations of the isolated black hole candidate OGLE-2011-BLG-0462 , and other collapsed objects discovered through gravitational microlensing
• Constraining the Pulsar 3D Velocity Distribution: The Impact of Spin-Velocity Alignment
• Chandra Proper Motions and Milliarcsecond Astrometry of Nineteen Pulsars
• Probing the millisecond pulsar origin of the $\gamma$-ray excess in the Galactic centre with LISA