KICKED NEUTRON-STARS AND MICROLENSING

Because of the large kick velocities with which neutron stars are born in supernova explosions, their spatial distribution is more extended than that of their progenitor stars. The large scale height of the neu tron stars above the disk plane makes them potential candidates for mi crolensing of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Adopting for the di stribution of kicks the measured velocities of young pulsars, we obtai n a microlensing optical depth of tau similar to 2N(10) x 10(-8) (wher e N-10 is the total number of neutron stars born in the disk in units of 10(10)). The event duration distribution has the interesting proper ty of being peaked at T similar to 60-80 days, but for the rates to be relevant for the present microlensing searches, it would require N-10 greater than or similar to 1, a value larger than the usually adopted ones (N-10 similar to 0.1-0.2).