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Phys. Rev. D 76, 125007 (2007) [10 pages]

Pulsar kicks with modified Urca and electrons in Landau levels

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Ernest M. Henley
Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA

Mikkel B. Johnson
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA

Leonard S. Kisslinger
Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA

Received 12 June 2007; published 6 December 2007

We derive the energy asymmetry given the protoneutron star during the time when the neutrino sphere is near the surface of the protoneutron star, using the modified Urca process. The electrons produced with the antineutrinos are in Landau levels due to the strong magnetic field, and this leads to asymmetry in the neutrino momentum, and a pulsar kick. The magnetic field must be strong enough for a large fraction of the electrons to be in the lowest Landau level; however, there is no direct dependence of our pulsar velocity on the strength of the magnetic field. Our main prediction is that the large pulsar kicks start at about 10 s and last for about 10 s, with the corresponding neutrinos correlated with the direction of the magnetic field. We predict a pulsar velocity of 1.03×10-4(T/1010   K)7  km/s, which reaches 1000  km/s if T≃1011   K.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.76.125007
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.76.125007
PACS:
97.60.Bw, 97.60.Gb, 97.60.Jd