Kicked Neutron Stars and Microlensing

S. MOLLERACH Y E. ROULET

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Año: 1997 vol. 479 p. 147 - 150

0004-637X

Because of the large kick velocities with which neutron stars are born in supernova explosions, their spatial distribution is more extended than that of their progenitor stars. The large scale height of the neutron stars above the disk plane makes them potential candidates for microlensing of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Adopting for the distribution of kicks the measured velocities of young pulsars, we obtain a microlensing optical depth of tau ~ 2N10 x 10-8 (where N10 is the total number of neutron stars born in the disk in units of 1010). The event duration distribution has the interesting property of being peaked at T ~ 60--80 days, but for the rates to be relevant for the present microlensing searches, it would require N10 >~ 1, a value larger than the usually adopted ones (N10 ~ 0.1--0.2).