The observed velocity distribution of young pulsars

Understand

We argue that comparison with observations of theoretical models for the velocity distribution of pulsars must be done directly with the observed quantities, i.e.

• parallax and the two components of proper motion.
• We develop a formalism to do so, and apply it to pulsars with accurate VLBI measurements.
• We find that a distribution with two maxwellians improves significantly on a single maxwellian.