Speaker
Description
The talk will be given remotely:
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https://huji.zoom.us/j/98293801426?pwd=T3Bpajk5aytmK0dSOUJrb1phdW4xQT09
Meeting ID: 982 9380 1426
Password: HEP_Joint
Abstract:
The Galactic center excess has lingered as a possible, but ambiguous, signal of new physics for several years. It has previously been argued that certain details of the excess emission imply that it likely originates from a population of point sources, but this remains a topic of vigorous debate. In this talk, I will report on recent work, relying on a new point source catalog (obtained by the Fermi-LAT collaboration), that sheds light on this controversial topic. After giving some background on the excess, I will discuss various metrics that have been used to try to understand its true nature. I will show that the large majority of bright sources that were previously suggested to be members of the excess are indeed contained in the new Fermi-LAT point source catalog -- and yet, despite masking out these sources (so that they cannot contribute to the excess), the excess remains just as bright in our new fit to the data. I will go on to discuss the implications of our findings for the two most popular interpretations of the excess and I will show some preliminary next steps to further clarify the nature of the excess.
