Morphological Tests of the Pulsar and Dark Matter Interpretations of the WMAP Haze

Abstract

The WMAP haze is an excess in microwave emission coming from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. In the case of synchrotron emission models of the haze, we present tests for the source of radiating high-energy electrons/positrons. We explore several models in the case of a pulsar population or dark matter annihilation as the source. These morphological signatures of these models are small behind the WMAP Galactic mask, but are testable and constrain the source models. We show that detailed measurements of the morphology may distinguish between the pulsar and dark matter interpretations as well as differentiate among different pulsar models and dark matter profile models individually. Specifically, we find that a zero central density Galactic pulsar population model is in tension with the observed WMAP haze. The Planck Observatory's greater sensitivity and expected smaller Galactic mask should potentially provide a robust signature of the WMAP haze as either a pulsar population or the dark matter.

8 pages, 8 figures. Version to appear in Physical Review D

References in corpus (8)

• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results
• Measurement of the Cosmic Ray e+ plus e- spectrum from 20 GeV to 1 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• On possible interpretations of the high energy electron-positron spectrum measured by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Component separation methods for the Planck mission
• Extended Anomalous Foreground Emission in the WMAP 3-Year Data
• Evidence Of Dark Matter Annihilations In The WMAP Haze
• Discriminating different scenarios to account for the cosmic $e^{\pm }$ excess by synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Giant Gamma-ray Bubbles from Fermi-LAT: AGN Activity or Bipolar Galactic Wind?
• Implications of CoGeNT and DAMA for Light WIMP Dark Matter
• Systematic effects in the extraction of the 'WMAP haze'
• The Electron Injection Spectrum Determined by Anomalous Excesses in Cosmic Ray, Gamma Ray, and Microwave Signals
• Testing the Dark Matter Annihilation Model for the WMAP Haze
• Cosmic ray backgrounds for dark matter indirect detection