Abstract I have studied the initial velocity (Maxwellian and exponential distributions) and the scale height of isolated old (aged ≥ 109 yr) neutron stars (NSs) at different Galactocentric distances R in three population models. The smooth time-independent 3-D axisymmetric gravitational potentials (Miyamoto-Nagai and Paczyński models) were also used. The correlation between these quantities significantly affects the shapes of the profiles and distributions of the simulated sample, because the differences in the initial kick can arise from differences in the formation and evolution of NSs with other physical parameters. The scale height of the density distribution increases systematically with R. I have also shown that the distribution of old NSs in these population models agrees with the observed structure of the Galaxy in terms of initial velocities (1-D and 3-D), as well as the scale height distributions. These distributions tend to have an asymptotic behavior at the point R = 2.75 kpc. This means that the quality of the models can be described in terms of a mean of the fitted Gaussian, and this could also give an overall perspective of the phase space properties of nearby old NSs on a given gravitational potential.
Keywords pulsar: general — stars: neutron — stars: statistics — stars: evolution — Galaxy: structure — Galaxy: disk — galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
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