ON PULSAR VELOCITIES FROM NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS

It has been recently suggested that magnetically affected neutrino osc illations inside a cooling protoneutron star, created in a supernova e xplosion, could explain the large proper motion of pulsars. We investi gate whether this hypothesis is in agreement with the observed propert ies of pulsars and find that present data disfavor the suggested mecha nism. The relevance of our results for other models proposed to unders tand the origin of pulsar velocities is also discussed.