Large Mixing Angle Sterile Neutrinos and Pulsar Velocities

TL;DR

This paper explores how sterile neutrinos with large mixing angles could explain the high velocities observed in pulsars by analyzing their asymmetric emission during the early stages after a supernova.

Contribution

It introduces a model incorporating sterile neutrinos fitted to experimental data to explain pulsar kicks via asymmetric neutrino emission in strong magnetic fields.

Findings

Sterile neutrino emission can produce sufficient asymmetry for pulsar velocities.

The model aligns with experimental fits from MiniBoone and LSND.

Asymmetric neutrino emission could account for observed pulsar kicks.

Abstract

We investigate the momentum given to a protoneutron star, the pulsar kick, during the first 10 seconds after temperature equilibrium is reached. Using a model with two sterile neutrinos obtained by fits to the MiniBoone and LSND experiments there is a large mixing angle, and the effective volume for emission is calculated. Using formulations with neutrinos created by URCA processes in a strong magnetic field, so the lowest Landau level has a sizable probability, we find that with known paramenters the asymmetric sterile neutrino emissivity might account for large pulsar kicks.