Trobada: The quasi-spherical excess of GeV gamma-rays around the Galactic Center

por Germán Arturo Gómez-Vargas (INFN, Rome & Chile U., Catolica)

miércoles 18 may. 2016 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Madrid

Seminar Room, 1.1.1 (IFIC)

Hypothetical dark matter annihilation signal is expected to be brightest towards the Galactic center (GC). Several groups have reported an excess of gamma-ray emission towards the GC. The excess signal has a peak in spectral energy distribution around a few GeV and it is consistent with a source being approximately spherical in shape. The possibility that this excess is coming from annihilating dark matter particles is very exciting, but one has to be very careful in eliminating other possible explanations of the excess. In the talk, I will describe the current observational status of the GC excess and review possible explanations, including sources of cosmic rays near the Galactic center, a population of millisecond pulsars in the Galactic bulge, and dark matter annihilation. I will also discuss the prospects of disentangling the nature of the excess with future observations.