Consistency Between the Luminosity Function of Resolved Millisecond Pulsars and the Galactic Center Excess

Abstract

Fermi Large Area Telescope data reveal an excess of GeV gamma rays from the direction of the Galactic Center and bulge. Several explanations have been proposed for this excess including an unresolved population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) and self-annihilating dark matter. It has been claimed that a key discriminant for or against the MSP explanation can be extracted from the properties of the luminosity function describing this source population. Specifically, is the luminosity function of the putative MSPs in the Galactic Center consistent with that characterizing the resolved MSPs in the Galactic disk? To investigate this we have used a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo to evaluate the posterior distribution of the parameters of the MSP luminosity function describing both resolved MSPs and the Galactic Center excess. At variance with some other claims, our analysis reveals that, within current uncertainties, both data sets can be well fit with the same luminosity function.

arXiv comment37 pages, 18 figures; V2: updated references and extended discussion slightly. V3: Additional material added, conclusions unchanged, matches version to appear in JCAP

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• The Second Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
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Cited by in corpus (36)

• Galactic Bulge Preferred Over Dark Matter for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Dark Matter Strikes Back at the Galactic Center
• Strong Evidence that the Galactic Bulge is Shining in Gamma Rays
• The Enigmatic Galactic Center Excess: Spurious Point Sources and Signal Mismodeling
• Characterizing the Nature of the Unresolved Point Sources in the Galactic Center
• The GCE in a New Light: Disentangling the $\gamma$-ray Sky with Bayesian Graph Convolutional Neural Networks
• Bayesian Model Comparison and Analysis of the Galactic Disk Population of Gamma-Ray Millisecond Pulsars
• Galactic Binaries Can Explain the Fermi Galactic Center Excess and 511 keV Emission
• Millisecond pulsar origin of the Galactic center excess and extended gamma-ray emission from Andromeda - a closer look
• Analyzing γ-rays of the Galactic Center with Deep Learning
• Comparing the Galactic Bulge and Galactic Disk Millisecond Pulsars
• A Census of X-ray Millisecond Pulsars in Globular Clusters
• Dim but not entirely dark: Extracting the Galactic Center Excess' source-count distribution with neural nets
• Maximum Entropy Estimation of the Galactic Bulge Morphology via the VVV Red Clump
• Pevatron at the Galactic Center: Multi-Wavelength Signatures from Millisecond Pulsars
• Anti-Deuterons and Anti-Helium Nuclei from Annihilating Dark Matter
• The Galactic bulge millisecond pulsars shining in X rays: A gamma-ray perspective
• Cherenkov Telescope Array sensitivity to the putative millisecond pulsar population responsible for the Galactic center excess
• Millisecond Pulsars Modify the Radio-SFR Correlation in Quiescent Galaxies
• Inverse Compton emission from millisecond pulsars in the Galactic bulge
• Dark matter substructure cannot explain properties of the Fermi Galactic Centre excess
• Probing the Fermi-LAT GeV excess with gravitational waves
• What the Milky Way's Dwarfs tell us about the Galactic Center extended excess
• Mind the gap: The discrepancy between simulation and reality drives interpretations of the Galactic Center Excess
• A New Determination of the Millisecond Pulsar Gamma-Ray Luminosity Function and Implications for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• A Multi-frequency analysis of possible Dark Matter Contributions to M31 Gamma-Ray Emissions
• Millisecond Pulsar Kicks Cause Difficulties in Explaining the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Hidden Higgs Portal Vector Dark Matter for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess from the Two-Step Cascade Annihilation, and Muon g-2
• Search for Scalar Dark Matter via Pseudoscalar Portal Interactions: In Light of the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Newly born extragalactic millisecond pulsars as efficient emitters of PeV neutrinos
• The Galactic Isotropic $\gamma$-ray Background and Implications for Dark Matter
• Characterizing the Expected Behavior of Non-Poissonian Template Fitting
• Constraints on the origins of the Galactic neutrino flux
• Dark matter, extra-terrestrial gamma-rays and the MSSM: a viability study
• Millisecond Pulsars in Globular Clusters and Implications for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Probing the millisecond pulsar origin of the $\gamma$-ray excess in the Galactic centre with LISA