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Revival of the Dark Matter Hypothesis for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess

Rebecca K. Leane and Tracy R. Slatyer
Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 241101 – Published 11 December 2019
Physics logo See Synopsis: New Hope for Milky Way Dark Matter
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Abstract

Statistical evidence has previously suggested that the galactic center GeV excess (GCE) originates largely from point sources, and not from annihilating dark matter. We examine the impact of unmodeled source populations on identifying the true origin of the GCE using non-Poissonian template fitting (NPTF) methods. In a proof-of-principle example with simulated data, we discover that unmodeled sources in the Fermi bubbles can lead to a dark matter signal being misattributed to point sources by the NPTF. We discover striking behavior consistent with a mismodeling effect in the real Fermi data, finding that large artificial injected dark matter signals are completely misattributed to point sources. Consequently, we conclude that dark matter may provide a dominant contribution to the GCE after all.

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  • Received 22 May 2019
  • Revised 29 September 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.241101

© 2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Synopsis

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New Hope for Milky Way Dark Matter

Published 11 December 2019

The so-called gamma-ray excess that radiates from the core of our Galaxy might be from dark matter after all. 

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Authors & Affiliations

Rebecca K. Leane1,* and Tracy R. Slatyer1,2,†

  • 1Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
  • 2School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA

  • *rleane@mit.edu
  • tslatyer@mit.edu

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Issue

Vol. 123, Iss. 24 — 13 December 2019

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