Galactic Center gamma-ray "excess" from an active past of the Galactic Centre?

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the gamma-ray excess observed at the Galactic Center can be explained by inverse Compton emission from high-energy electrons resulting from a past burst event, emphasizing the importance of considering time-dependent phenomena in astrophysical analyses.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a past energetic burst can reproduce the gamma-ray excess features, highlighting the need to account for time-dependent processes in dark matter signal interpretation.

Findings

The gamma-ray excess can be explained by inverse Compton emission from a past burst event.

The timescale of ~10^6 years matches other evidence of past activity in the Galactic Center.

Time-dependent phenomena are crucial for accurate interpretation of gamma-ray signals.

Abstract

Several groups have recently claimed evidence for an unaccounted gamma-ray excess over {the} diffuse backgrounds at few GeV in {the} Fermi-LAT data in a region around the Galactic Center, consistent with a dark matter annihilation origin. We demonstrate that the main spectral and angular features of this excess can be reproduced if they are mostly due to inverse Compton emission from high-energy electrons injected in a burst event of ~10^52 - 10^53erg roughly O(10^6) years ago. We consider this example as a proof of principle that time-dependent phenomena need to be understood and accounted for - together with detailed diffuse foregrounds and unaccounted "steady state" astrophysical sources - before any robust inference can be made about dark matter signals at the Galactic Center. In addition, we point out that the timescale suggested by our study, which controls both the energy cutoff and the angular extension of the signal, intriguingly matches (together with the energy budget) what is indirectly inferred by other evidences suggesting a very active Galactic Center in the past, for instance related to intense star formation and accretion phenomena.