Evidence for alignment of the rotation and velocity vectors in pulsars

Abstract

We present strong observational evidence for a relationship between the direction of a pulsar's motion and its rotation axis. We show carefully calibrated polarization data for 25 pulsars, 20 of which display linearly polarized emission from the pulse longitude at closest approach to the magnetic pole. Such data allow the determination of the position angle of the linear polarization which in turn reflects the position angle of the rotation axis. Of these 20 pulsars, 10 show an offset between the velocity vector and the polarization position angle which is either less than 10° or more than 80°, a fraction which is very unlikely by random chance. We believe that the bimodal nature of the distribution arises from the presence of orthogonal polarization modes in the pulsar radio emission. In some cases, this orthogonal ambiguity is resolved by observations at other wavelengths so that we conclude that the velocity vector and the rotation axis are aligned at birth. Strengthening the case is the fact that 4 of the 5 pulsars with ages less than 3 Myr show this relationship, including the Vela pulsar. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of the Spruit & Phinney model of pulsar birth-kicks. We point out that, contrary to claims in the literature, observations of double neutron star systems do not rule out aligned kick models and describe a possible observational test involving the double pulsar system.