Annihilating dark matter or noise?: A statistical examination of the Fermi GeV excess around the Galactic Centre

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2019-04-05

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Nestor Mirabal, Annihilating dark matter or noise?: A statistical examination of the Fermi GeV excess around the Galactic Centre, https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7410

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Public Domain Mark 1.0
This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law

Subjects

Abstract

Excess Fermi GeV emission around the Galactic Centre has been interpreted as a possible signature of annihilating dark matter. Here we analyse three aspects of this claim: its spectral cutoff, the correlation between the spectral shape of the purported signal and known noise components, and its brightness profile. Experimentally, the correlations that exist between the GeV excess and known sources of noise make it difficult to conclude that a dark matter signal claim can be made without independent direct detection confirmation. As a possible way forward, we introduce three criteria that could potentially help to validate a dark matter annihilation signal in gamma rays.