A status update on the Galactic Center GeV gamma-ray excess

Pacific
Speaker(s) Tracy Slatyer (MIT)
Video
Description

Please contact erule@berkeley.edu or anupam.ray@berkeley.edu for zoom links.

The inner region of the Milky Way Galaxy hosts a central glow of gamma rays often called the Galactic Center Excess. This excess is highly statistically significant and has garnered great interest as a possible signal of either dark matter particles colliding and annihilating, or a previously undiscovered population of pulsars in the stellar bulge. I will briefly outline the history of our understanding of the excess and the arguments for various interpretations, attempt to describe the current status of the controversy including recent developments, and discuss some future paths forward.