Spurious Point Source Signals in the Galactic Center Excess

Abstract

We re-examine evidence that the Galactic Center Excess (GCE) originates primarily from point sources (PSs). We show that in our region of interest, non-Poissonian template fitting (NPTF) evidence for GCE PSs is an artifact of unmodeled north-south asymmetry of the GCE. This asymmetry is strongly favored by the fit (although it is unclear if this is physical), and when it is allowed, the preference for PSs becomes insignificant. We reproduce this behavior in simulations, including detailed properties of the spurious PS population. We conclude that NTPF evidence for GCE PSs is highly susceptible to certain systematic errors, and should not at present be taken to robustly disfavor a dominantly smooth GCE.

arXiv comment6+6 pages, 3+3 figures, published in PRL. See also companion PRD paper arXiv:2002.12371

References in corpus (22)

• The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• MultiNest: an efficient and robust Bayesian inference tool for cosmology and particle physics
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog
• Propagation of cosmic-ray nucleons in the Galaxy
• Dark Matter Annihilation in The Galactic Center As Seen by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope
• On The Origin Of The Gamma Rays From The Galactic Center
• The Characterization of the Gamma-Ray Signal from the Central Milky Way: A Compelling Case for Annihilating Dark Matter
• Background model systematics for the Fermi GeV excess
• Fermi-LAT Observations of High-Energy Gamma-Ray Emission Toward the Galactic Center
• Strong support for the millisecond pulsar origin of the Galactic center GeV excess
• Evidence for Unresolved Gamma-Ray Point Sources in the Inner Galaxy
• Galactic Bulge Preferred Over Dark Matter for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• The Fermi-LAT GeV Excess Traces Stellar Mass in the Galactic Bulge
• Dark Matter Strikes Back at the Galactic Center
• Statistics of gamma-ray point sources below the Fermi detection limit
• Strong Evidence that the Galactic Bulge is Shining in Gamma Rays
• The Enigmatic Galactic Center Excess: Spurious Point Sources and Signal Mismodeling
• A New Mask for An Old Suspect: Testing the Sensitivity of the Galactic Center Excess to the Point Source Mask
• Characterizing the Nature of the Unresolved Point Sources in the Galactic Center
• Distinguishing Dark Matter from Unresolved Point Sources in the Inner Galaxy with Photon Statistics
• A Search for Dark Matter Annihilation in the Milky Way Halo
• NPTFit: A code package for Non-Poissonian Template Fitting

Cited by in corpus (42)

• Celestial-Body Focused Dark Matter Annihilation Throughout the Galaxy
• Strong constraints on thermal relic dark matter from Fermi-LAT observations of the Galactic Center
• The Return of the Templates: Revisiting the Galactic Center Excess with Multi-Messenger Observations
• The Enigmatic Galactic Center Excess: Spurious Point Sources and Signal Mismodeling
• The GCE in a New Light: Disentangling the $\gamma$-ray Sky with Bayesian Graph Convolutional Neural Networks
• 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
• A neural simulation-based inference approach for characterizing the Galactic Center $\gamma$-ray excess
• Les Houches Lectures on Indirect Detection of Dark Matter
• Dissecting the inner Galaxy with $\gamma$-ray pixel count statistics
• Evidence of TeV Halos Around Millisecond Pulsars
• Dim but not entirely dark: Extracting the Galactic Center Excess' source-count distribution with neural nets
• Luminosity functions consistent with a pulsar-dominated Galactic Center Excess
• Dark Matter Candidates and Searches
• Entering the Era of Dark Matter Astronomy? Near to Long-Term Forecasts in X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Bands
• Indirect searches for dark matter bound state formation and level transitions
• 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
• Robust inference of the Galactic centre gamma-ray excess spatial properties
• Muonphilic Dark Matter explanation of gamma-ray galactic center excess: a comprehensive analysis
• A Compound Poisson Generator approach to Point-Source Inference in Astrophysics
• Probing the pulsar explanation of the Galactic-Center GeV excess using continuous gravitational-wave searches
• Mind the gap: The discrepancy between simulation and reality drives interpretations of the Galactic Center Excess
• Harnessing the Population Statistics of Subhalos to Search for Annihilating Dark Matter
• A Closer Look at CP-Violating Higgs Portal Dark Matter as a Candidate for the GCE
• Towards resolving the Galactic center GeV excess with millisecond-pulsar-like sources using machine learning
• Millisecond Pulsar Kicks Cause Difficulties in Explaining the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Indirect Detection of Dark Matter in the Galaxy
• "Non-Local" Effects from Boosted Dark Matter in Indirect Detection
• Extracting the gamma-ray source-count distribution below the Fermi-LAT detection limit with deep learning
• Constraining Dark Matter Microphysics with the Annihilation Signal from Subhalos
• Diffuse X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Limits on Boson Stars that Interact with Nuclei
• The Cherenkov Telescope Array Will Test Whether Pulsars Generate the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Applying Simulation-Based Inference to Spectral and Spatial Information from the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• The effect of kick velocities on the spatial distribution of millisecond pulsars and implications for the Galactic center excess
• On the Gravitational Wave Counterpart to a Gamma-ray Galactic Center Signal from Millisecond Pulsars
• Characterizing the Expected Behavior of Non-Poissonian Template Fitting
• Interpretation of the Galactic gamma-ray excess with the dark matter indicated by ${}^8$Be and ${}^4$He anomalous transitions
• Improved Modeling of the Discrete Component of the Galactic Interstellar Gamma-ray Emission and Implications for the Fermi-LAT Galactic Center Excess
• On the Energy Distribution of the Galactic Center Excess' Sources
• Millisecond Pulsars in Globular Clusters and Implications for the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess
• Assessing the Impact of Hydrogen Absorption on the Characteristics of the Galactic Center Excess