A Comprehensive Study of Neutron Star Retention in Globular Clusters

(abridged) Observations of very high speeds among pulsars in the Galacticdisk present a puzzle regarding neutron stars in globular clusters. Theinferred characteristic speed of single pulsars in the Galaxy is $\sim 5-10$times as large as the central escape speed from the most massive globularclusters. It is then reasonable to ask why any pulsars are seen in globularclusters, whereas, in fact, quite a large number have been detected and as manyas $\sim 1000$ are thought to be present in some of the richest clusters. We use a Monte Carlo approach to generate a population of massive primordialbinaries. If we utilize the convention assumptions regarding mass transfer andneutron star kicks, we find that < 5% of the neutron stars initially formed ina massive cluster can be retained. We suggest that this fraction is too low toaccount for what is observed, and we speculate on possible alternativesolutions to the retention problem.Comment: 25 pages in ``emulateapj'' style; submitted to Ap