BibTeX

@article{2507.17804v1,
Author        = {Florian List and Yujin Park and Nicholas L. Rodd and Eve Schoen and Florian Wolf},
Title         = {On the Energy Distribution of the Galactic Center Excess' Sources},
Eprint        = {2507.17804v1},
ArchivePrefix = {arXiv},
PrimaryClass  = {astro-ph.HE},
Abstract      = {The Galactic Center Excess (GCE) remains one of the defining mysteries
uncovered by the Fermi $\gamma$-ray Space Telescope. Although it may yet herald
the discovery of annihilating dark matter, weighing against that conclusion are
analyses showing the spatial structure of the emission appears more consistent
with a population of dim point sources. Technical limitations have restricted
prior analyses to studying the point-source hypothesis purely spatially. All
spectral information that could help disentangle the GCE from the complex and
uncertain astrophysical emission was discarded. We demonstrate that a neural
network-aided simulation-based inference approach can overcome such limitations
and thereby confront the point source explanation of the GCE with spatial and
spectral data. The addition is profound: energy information drives the putative
point sources to be significantly dimmer, indicating either the GCE is truly
diffuse in nature or made of an exceptionally large number of sources.
Quantitatively, for our best fit background model, the excess is essentially
consistent with Poisson emission as predicted by dark matter. If the excess is
instead due to point sources, our median prediction is ${\cal O}(10^5)$ sources
in the Galactic Center, or more than 35,000 sources at 90% confidence, both
significantly larger than the hundreds of sources preferred by earlier
point-source analyses of the GCE.},
Year          = {2025},
Month         = {Jul},
Url           = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17804v1},
File          = {2507.17804v1.pdf}
}