Testing the millisecond pulsar scenario of the Galactic center gamma-ray excess with very high energy gamma-rays

Abstract

The recent analyses of the Fermi Large Area Telescope data show an extended GeV $\gamma$-ray excess on top of the expected diffuse background in the Galactic center region, which can be explained with annihilating dark matter or a population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). We propose to observe the very high energy $\gamma$-rays for distinguishing the MSP scenario from the dark matter scenario. The GeV $\gamma$-ray MSPs should release most energy to the relativistic $e^{\pm }$ wind, which will diffuse in the Galaxy and radiate TeV $\gamma$-rays through inverse Compton scattering and bremsstrahlung processes. By calculating the spectrum and spatial distribution, we show that such emission is detectable with the next generation very high energy $\gamma$-ray observatory, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), under reasonable model parameters. It is essential to search for the multi-wavelength counterparts to the GeV $\gamma$-ray excess for solving this mystery in the high energy universe.

6 pages, 5 figures and 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (11)

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• Constraints on the Galactic Halo Dark Matter from Fermi-LAT Diffuse Measurements
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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Millisecond pulsars and the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess: the importance of luminosity function and secondary emission
• Distinguishing Dark Matter from Unresolved Point Sources in the Inner Galaxy with Photon Statistics
• Millisecond Pulsars from Accretion Induced Collapse as the Origin of the Galactic Centre Gamma-ray Excess Signal
• A neural simulation-based inference approach for characterizing the Galactic Center $\gamma$-ray excess
• Dim but not entirely dark: Extracting the Galactic Center Excess' source-count distribution with neural nets
• Cherenkov Telescope Array sensitivity to the putative millisecond pulsar population responsible for the Galactic center excess
• Inverse Compton emission from millisecond pulsars in the Galactic bulge
• Interpreting the galactic center gamma-ray excess in the NMSSM
• Interpretations of the possible 42.7 GeV $\gamma$-ray line
• Characterizing the Expected Behavior of Non-Poissonian Template Fitting
• Observations of the Fermi bubbles and the Galactic center excess with the DArk Matter Particle Explorer