1994A&A...290..496J

Refering to recent hydrodynamical computations (Herant et al. 1992; Janka & Mueller 1993a) it is argued that neutron star kicks up to a few hundred km/s might be caused by a turbulent overturn of the matter between proto-neutron star and supernova shock during the early phase of the supernova explosion. These recoil speeds ("kick velocities") may be of the right size to explain the measured proper motions of most pulsars and do not require the presence of magnetic fields in the star. It is also possible that anisotropic neutrino emission associated with convective processes in the surface layers of the nascent neutron star (Burrows & Fryxell 1992; Janka & Mueller 1993b; Mueller 1993) provides an acceleration mechanism (Woosley 1987), although our estimates indicate that the maximum attainable velocities are around 200km/s. Yet, it turns out to be very unlikely that the considered stochastic asymmetries of supernova explosions are able to produce large enough recoils to account for pulsar velocities in excess of about 500km/s, which can be found in the samples of Harrison et al. (1993) and Taylor et al. (1993). It is concluded that other acceleration mechanisms have to be devised to explain the fast motion of PSR 2224+65 (transverse speed ≥800km/s; Cordes et al. 1993) and the high-velocities deduced from associations between supernova remnants and nearby young pulsars (e.g., Frail & Kulkarni 1991; Stewart et al. 1993; Caraveo 1993).