Luminosity functions consistent with a pulsar-dominated Galactic Center excess
| Autor: | Jack T. Dinsmore, Tracy R. Slatyer |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: |
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena FOS: Physical sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 2022:025 |
| ISSN: | 1475-7516 |
| DOI: | 10.1088/1475-7516/2022/06/025 |
| Popis: | A new population of millisecond pulsars is a long-standing proposed explanation for the excess of GeV-scale gamma rays emanating from the region surrounding the center of the Milky Way (the "Galactic Center excess"). We examine several simple parameterizations of possible luminosity functions for this population, as well as several benchmark luminosity functions proposed in the literature, and compare the predicted populations of resolved point sources to the Fermi 4FGL-DR2 point source catalog and a sub-population recently identified using wavelet-based methods. We provide general results that can be used to translate upper limits on the number of resolved point sources associated with the excess, and the fraction of the flux in the excess that can be attributed to resolved sources, into limits on the luminosity function parameter space. We discuss a number of important systematic uncertainties, including in the detection threshold model and the total flux attributed to the excess. We delineate regions of parameter space (containing existing benchmark models) where there is no apparent tension with current data, and the number of total pulsars needed to explain the excess is in the range of O(10,000-100,000). Forecasting the effects of lowered point source detection thresholds, we show that novel analysis methods that probe sub-threshold point source populations can hope to resolve more than 30% of the flux of the excess. Comment: Published in JCAP; updated to fix minor typos. 32 pages plus appendices |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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