Millisecond Pulsars, TeV Halos, and Implications For The Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess

Abstract

Observations by HAWC indicate that many young pulsars (including Geminga and Monogem) are surrounded by spatially extended, multi-TeV emitting regions. It is not currently known, however, whether TeV emission is also produced by recycled, millisecond pulsars (MSPs). In this study, we perform a stacked analysis of 24 MSPs within HAWC's field-of-view, finding between 2.6-3.2 sigma evidence that these sources are, in fact, surrounded by TeV halos. The efficiency with which these MSPs produce TeV halos is similar to that exhibited by young pulsars. This result suggests that several dozen MSPs will ultimately be detectable by HAWC, including many "invisible" pulsars without radio beams oriented in our direction. The TeV halos of unresolved MSPs could also dominate the TeV-scale diffuse emission observed at high galactic latitudes. We also discuss the possibility that TeV and radio observations could be used to constrain the population of MSPs that is present in the inner Milky Way, thereby providing us with a new way to test the hypothesis that MSPs are responsible for the Galactic Center GeV excess.

17 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (26)

• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• The spectrum of isotropic diffuse gamma-ray emission between 100 MeV and 820 GeV
• Extended gamma-ray sources around pulsars constrain the origin of the positron flux at Earth
• Background model systematics for the Fermi GeV excess
• Simplified Dark Matter Models for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• A Renormalizable Model for the Galactic Center Gamma Ray Excess from Dark Matter Annihilation
• Possible Evidence For Dark Matter Annihilation In The Inner Milky Way From The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope
• On Pulsar Distance Measurements and their Uncertainties
• Hidden On-Shell Mediators for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Fitting the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess with Cascade Annihilations
• Millisecond pulsars and the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess: the importance of luminosity function and secondary emission
• Flavored Dark Matter and the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• The Effective Hooperon
• Hidden Sector Dark Matter Models for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• The Galactic Center Excess from the Bottom Up
• Z-portal dark matter
• Galactic center $\gamma$-ray excess in hidden sector DM models with dark gauge symmetries: local $Z_3$ symmetry as an example
• Low-mass right-handed sneutrino dark matter: SuperCDMS and LUX constraints and the Galactic Centre gamma-ray excess
• Z' Mediated Dark Matter Models for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Supersymmetric Sub-Electroweak Scale Dark Matter, the Galactic Center Gamma-ray Excess, and Exotic Decays of the 125 GeV Higgs Boson
• The Gamma-Ray Pulsar Population of Globular Clusters: Implications for the GeV Excess
• Towards a Supersymmetric Description of the Fermi Galactic Center Excess
• Radio Detection of the Fermi LAT Blind Search Millisecond Pulsar J1311-3430
• Cosmic-ray positrons from millisecond pulsars
• Pulsar Wind Nebulae and the Non-thermal X-Ray Emission of Millisecond Pulsars
• Lining up the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess

Cited by in corpus (38)

• Dark Matter Strikes Back at the Galactic Center
• TeV Halos are Everywhere: Prospects for New Discoveries
• The Return of the Templates: Revisiting the Galactic Center Excess with Multi-Messenger Observations
• The Hunt for Pevatrons: The Case of Supernova Remnants
• Search for continuous gravitational wave emission from the Milky Way center in O3 LIGO--Virgo data
• Cosmic-ray Antinuclei as Messengers of New Physics: Status and Outlook for the New Decade
• Status and perspectives of Continuous Gravitational Wave searches
• Gamma rays as probes of cosmic-ray propagation and interactions in galaxies
• Millisecond Pulsars from Accretion Induced Collapse as the Origin of the Galactic Centre Gamma-ray Excess Signal
• GeV-TeV Cosmic Ray Leptons in the Solar System from the Bow Shock Wind Nebula of the Nearest Millisecond Pulsar J0437-4715
• The Highest Energy HAWC Sources are Likely Leptonic and Powered by Pulsars
• Evidence of TeV Halos Around Millisecond Pulsars
• The Physics of Pulsar Halos: Research Progress and Prospect
• Evidence for a high-energy tail in the gamma-ray spectra of globular clusters
• Anisotropic diffusion cannot explain TeV halo observations
• Gamma-Ray Emission from Molecular Clouds Generated by Penetrating Cosmic Rays
• Population synthesis of pulsar wind nebulae and pulsar halos in the Milky Way -- Predicted contributions to the very-high-energy sky
• Pevatron at the Galactic Center: Multi-Wavelength Signatures from Millisecond Pulsars
• Diffuse Ultra-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Emission From TeV Halos
• Millisecond Pulsars Modify the Radio-SFR Correlation in Quiescent Galaxies
• Pulsars Do Not Produce Sharp Features in the Cosmic-Ray Electron and Positron Spectra
• Inverse Compton emission from millisecond pulsars in the Galactic bulge
• Deep observations of the globular cluster M15 with the MAGIC telescopes
• Positron Excess from Cosmic Ray Interactions in Galactic Molecular Clouds
• Multimessenger TeV Dark Matter: a mini review
• Features of the gamma-ray pulsar halo HESS J1831$-$098
• Constraining the Milky Way's Pulsar Population with the Cosmic-Ray Positron Fraction
• Resolving the bow shock and tail of the cannonball pulsar PSR J0002+6216
• Absence of TeV halos around millisecond pulsars
• The Cherenkov Telescope Array Will Test Whether Pulsars Generate the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Extended TeV Halos May Commonly Exist around Middle-Aged Pulsars
• Optimal observing strategies for velocity-suppressed dark matter annihilation
• Characterizing the Expected Behavior of Non-Poissonian Template Fitting
• The Contribution From TeV Halos to the Isotropic Gamma-Ray Background
• Performance of a Small Array of Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes sited in Australia
• The contribution to Galactic Centre γ-ray excess from cluster-born millisecond pulsars. Constraints from direct N-body simulations
• Gamma-Ray Millisecond Pulsars: Off-pulse Emission Characteristics, Phase-Resolved Pseudo-Luminosity--Cutoff Energy Correlation, and High-energy Pulsed Emission
• Optimising an Array of Cherenkov Telescopes in Australia for the Detection of TeV Gamma-Ray Transients