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      Strong support for the millisecond pulsar origin of the Galactic center GeV excess

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          Abstract

          Using gamma-ray data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope, various groups have identified a clear excess emission in the Inner Galaxy, at energies around a few GeV. This excess resembles remarkably well a signal from dark-matter annihilation. One of the most compelling astrophysical interpretations is that the excess is caused by the combined effect of a previously undetected population of dim gamma-ray sources. Because of their spectral similarity, the best candidates are millisecond pulsars. Here, we search for this hypothetical source population, using a novel approach based on wavelet decomposition of the gamma-ray sky and the statistics of Gaussian random fields. Using almost seven years of Fermi-LAT data, we detect a clustering of photons as predicted for the hypothetical population of millisecond pulsar, with a statistical significance of 10.0 sigma. For plausible values of the luminosity function, this population explains 100% of the observed excess emission. We argue that other extragalactic or Galactic sources, a mismodeling of Galactic diffuse emission, or the thick-disk population of pulsars are unlikely to account for this observation.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          2015-06-16
          2016-03-09
          Article
          10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.051102
          1506.05104
          abea4f3b-d8b0-457e-8a72-88e24f24bffe

          http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

          History
          Custom metadata
          Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 051102 (2016)
          6+10 pages, 3+10 figures, 1 table; v2 updated to pass 8 Fermi data, additional supplemental material with extended discussion (conclusions unchanged); v3 matches PRL version with further checks (conclusions unchanged)
          astro-ph.HE hep-ph

          High energy & Particle physics,High energy astrophysical phenomena
          High energy & Particle physics, High energy astrophysical phenomena

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