On the Energy Distribution of the Galactic Center Excess' Sources
This research addresses the astrophysical problem of the GCE's origin, which is crucial for understanding dark matter or stellar populations, and is incremental by extending prior spatial-only analyses with spectral data.
The study tackled the Galactic Center Excess (GCE) mystery by using a neural network-aided simulation-based inference approach to incorporate both spatial and spectral data, finding that if the GCE is due to point sources, it requires over 35,000 sources at 90% confidence, significantly more than previous estimates of hundreds.
The Galactic Center Excess (GCE) remains one of the defining mysteries uncovered by the Fermi $γ$-ray Space Telescope. Although it may yet herald the discovery of annihilating dark matter, weighing against that conclusion are analyses showing the spatial structure of the emission appears more consistent with a population of dim point sources. Technical limitations have restricted prior analyses to studying the point-source hypothesis purely spatially. All spectral information that could help disentangle the GCE from the complex and uncertain astrophysical emission was discarded. We demonstrate that a neural network-aided simulation-based inference approach can overcome such limitations and thereby confront the point source explanation of the GCE with spatial and spectral data. The addition is profound: energy information drives the putative point sources to be significantly dimmer, indicating either the GCE is truly diffuse in nature or made of an exceptionally large number of sources. Quantitatively, for our best fit background model, the excess is essentially consistent with Poisson emission as predicted by dark matter. If the excess is instead due to point sources, our median prediction is ${\cal O}(10^5)$ sources in the Galactic Center, or more than 35,000 sources at 90% confidence, both significantly larger than the hundreds of sources preferred by earlier point-source analyses of the GCE.