Dark Matter Strikes Back at the Galactic Center. (arXiv:1904.08430v1 [astro-ph.HE])
<a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Leane_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">Rebecca K. Leane</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Slatyer_T/0/1/0/all/0/1">Tracy R. Slatyer</a>
Statistical evidence has previously suggested that the Galactic Center GeV
Excess (GCE) originates largely from point sources, and not from annihilating
dark matter. We examine the impact of unmodeled source populations on
identifying the true origin of the GCE using non-Poissonian template fitting
(NPTF) methods. In a proof-of-principle example with simulated data, we
discover that unmodeled sources in the Fermi Bubbles can lead to a dark matter
signal being misattributed to point sources by the NPTF. We discover striking
behavior consistent with a mismodeling effect in the real Fermi data, finding
that large artificial injected dark matter signals are completely misattributed
to point sources. Consequently, we conclude that dark matter may provide a
dominant contribution to the GCE after all.
Statistical evidence has previously suggested that the Galactic Center GeV
Excess (GCE) originates largely from point sources, and not from annihilating
dark matter. We examine the impact of unmodeled source populations on
identifying the true origin of the GCE using non-Poissonian template fitting
(NPTF) methods. In a proof-of-principle example with simulated data, we
discover that unmodeled sources in the Fermi Bubbles can lead to a dark matter
signal being misattributed to point sources by the NPTF. We discover striking
behavior consistent with a mismodeling effect in the real Fermi data, finding
that large artificial injected dark matter signals are completely misattributed
to point sources. Consequently, we conclude that dark matter may provide a
dominant contribution to the GCE after all.
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