Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of New Mexico

Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars

The effect of kick velocities on the spatial distribution of millisecond pulsars and implications for the galactic centre excess

Presented by Chris Gordon, University of Canterbury

Recently it has become apparent that a galactic centre excess (GCE) of gamma rays may be spatially correlated with the stellar distribution in the galactic bulge. This has given extra motivation for the unresolved population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) explanation for the GCE. However, in the "recycling" channel the neutron star forms from a core collapse supernovae that undergoes a random "kick" due to the asymmetry of the explosion. This would imply a smoothing out of the spatial distribution of the MSPs. We used N-body simulations to model how the MSP spatial distribution changes. The probability distribution of natal kick velocities was estimated using the resolved gamma-ray MSP proper motions, where MSPs have velocities relative to the circular motion of 77 +/- 6 km/s. It was found that, due to the natal kicks, there is an approximately 10% increase in each of the bulge MSP spatial distribution dimensions and also the bulge MSP distribution becomes less boxy but is still far from being spherical.

2:00 pm, Tuesday, September 7, 2021
Zoom,

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