1999A&A...346...91B

Mergers of compact objects may lead to different astrophysical phenomena: they may provide sources of observable gravitational radiation, and also they may be connected with gamma-ray bursts. Estimates of the rate with which such mergers take place are based on assumptions about various parameters describing the binary evolution. The distribution of one of these parameters - the kick velocity a neutron star receives at birth will strongly influence the number and orbital parameters of compact objects binaries. We calculate these effect using population synthesis of binary stars and show that the expected compact object merger rate changes by a factor of 30 when the kick velocity varies within its current observational bounds.