Traditionally runaway stars are O and B type stars with large peculiar
velocities.We want to extend this definition to young stars (up to ~50 Myr) of
any spectral type and identify those present in the Hipparcos catalogue
applying different selection criteria such as peculiar space velocities or
peculiar one-dimensional velocities. Runaway stars are important to study the
evolution of multiple star systems or star clusters as well as to identify
origins of neutron stars. We compile distances, proper motions, spectral types,
luminosity classes, V magnitudes and B-V colours and utilise evolutionary
models from different authors to obtain star ages and study a sample of 7663
young Hipparcos stars within 3 kpc from the Sun. Radial velocities are obtained
from the literature. We investigate the distributions of the peculiar spatial
velocity, the peculiar radial velocity as well as the peculiar tangential
velocity and its one-dimensional components and obtain runaway star
probabilities for each star in the sample. In addition, we look for stars that
are situated outside any OB association or OB cluster and the Galactic plane as
well as stars of which the velocity vector points away from the median velocity
vector of neighbouring stars or the surrounding local OB association/ cluster
although the absolute velocity might be small. We find a total of 2547 runaway
star candidates (with a contamination of normal Population I stars of 20 per
cent at most). Thus, after subtraction of those 20 per cent, the runaway
frequency among young stars is about 27 per cent. We compile a catalogue of
runaway stars which will be available via VizieR.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS old
version replaced due to change of the title after journal proof-readin
