Determination of the birth-mass function of neutron stars from observations

Abstract

The birth-mass function of neutron stars encodes rich information about supernova explosions, double-star evolution and the properties of matter under extreme conditions. To date, it has remained poorly constrained by observations, however. Applying probabilistic corrections to account for mass accreted by recycled pulsars in binary systems to mass measurements of 90 neutron stars, we find that the birth masses of neutron stars can be described by a unimodal distribution that smoothly turns on at 1.1 M_⊙ and peaks at ~1.27 M_⊙, before declining as a steep power law. Such a ‘turn-on’ power-law distribution is strongly favoured against the widely adopted empirical double-Gaussian model at the 3σ level. The power-law shape may be inherited from the initial mass function of massive stars, but the relative dearth of massive neutron stars implies that single stars with initial masses greater than ~18 M_⊙ do not form neutron stars, in agreement with the absence of massive red supergiant progenitors of supernovae.