The Return of the Templates: Revisiting the Galactic Center Excess with Multi-Messenger Observations

TL;DR

This study revisits the Galactic Center Excess using new high-resolution gamma-ray templates and multi-messenger data, finding a high-energy tail that challenges millisecond pulsar explanations and supports dark matter annihilation models.

Contribution

Introduces a new set of galactic diffuse gamma-ray templates and applies multi-messenger constraints, refining the characterization of the GCE and its possible origins.

Findings

High-energy tail in the GCE, especially in the northern hemisphere.

Millisecond pulsars are unlikely to produce the high-energy emission.

Dark matter annihilation around 40 GeV fits the GCE well, especially in the southern sky.

Abstract

The Galactic center excess (GCE) remains one of the most intriguing discoveries from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations. We revisit the characteristics of the GCE by first producing a new set of high-resolution galactic diffuse gamma-ray emission templates, which are ultimately due to cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar medium. Using multi-messenger observations we constrain the properties of the galactic diffuse emission. The broad properties of the GCE that we find in this work are qualitatively unchanged despite the introduction of this new set of templates, though its quantitative features appear mildly different than those obtained in previous analyses. In particular, we find a high-energy tail at higher significance than previously reported. This tail is very prominent in the northern hemisphere, and less so in the southern hemisphere. This strongly affects one prominent interpretation of the excess: known millisecond pulsars are incapable of producing this high-energy emission, even in the relatively softer southern hemisphere, and are therefore disfavored as the sole explanation of the GCE. The annihilation of dark matter particles of mass $40^{+10}_{-7}$ GeV (95$\%$ CL) to $b$ quarks with a cross-section of $\sigma v = 1.4^{+0.6}_{-0.3} \times 10^{-26}$ cm$^{3}$s$^{-1}$ provides a good fit to the excess especially in the relatively cleaner southern sky. Dark matter of the same mass range annihilating to $b$ quarks or heavier dark matter particles annihilating to heavier Standard Model bosons can combine with millisecond pulsars to provide a good fit to the southern hemisphere emission. As part of this paper, we make publicly available all of our templates and the data covariance matrix we have generated to account for systematic uncertainties.[abridged]