Neutron star kicks by the gravitational tug-boat mechanism in asymmetric supernova explosions: progenitor and explosion dependence

TL;DR

This paper reviews how asymmetric supernova explosions impart high velocities to neutron stars through gravitational forces, analyzing dependencies on explosion energy, ejecta, and progenitor properties, with implications for different supernova types.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the gravitational tug-boat mechanism for neutron star kicks, including analytic expressions and progenitor dependence, extending understanding of supernova asymmetries.

Findings

Gravitational attraction of anisotropic ejecta drives NS kicks up to over 1000 km/s.

NS kick velocity depends on explosion energy, ejecta mass, and asymmetry.

Electron-capture and ultra-stripped SNe likely produce lower NS kicks.

Abstract

Asymmetric mass ejection in the early phase of supernova (SN) explosions can impart a kick velocity to the new-born neutron star (NS). For neutrino-driven explosions the NS acceleration was shown to be mainly caused by the gravitational attraction of the anisotropically expelled inner ejecta, while hydrodynamic forces contribute on a subdominant level, and asymmetric neutrino emission plays only a secondary role. Two- and three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations demonstrated that this gravitational tug-boat mechanism can explain the observed space velocities of young NSs up to more than 1000 km/s. Here, we discuss how the NS kick depends on the energy, ejecta mass, and asymmetry of the SN explosion, and which role the compactness of the pre-collapse stellar core plays for the momentum transfer to the NS. We also provide simple analytic expressions for the NS velocity in terms of these quantities. Referring to results of hydrodynamic simulations in the literature, we argue why within the discussed scenario of NS acceleration, electron-capture SNe, low-mass Fe-core SNe and ultra-stripped SNe can be expected to have considerably lower intrinsic NS kicks than core-collapse SNe of massive stellar cores. Our basic arguments remain valid also if progenitor stars possess large-scale asymmetries in their convective silicon and oxygen burning layers. Possible scenarios for spin-kick alignment are sketched. Much of our discussion remains on a conceptual and qualitative level and more work is needed on the numerical modeling side to determine the dependences of involved parameters, whose prescriptions will be needed for recipes that can be used to better describe NS kicks in binary evolution and population synthesis studies.