Particle Physics Seminar, Ben Safdi, MIT, "The Fermi GeV excess: annihilating dark matter or millisecond pulsars?"

Date
May 14, 2015, 4:00 pm5:30 pm
Location
Jadwin 303

Details

Event Description
Data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope suggests that there is an extended excess of GeV gamma-ray photons in the Inner Galaxy. Identifying potential astrophysical sources that contribute to this excess is an important step in verifying whether the signal originates from annihilating dark matter. I will show that the statistics of the photons can potentially distinguish between the dark-matter and point-source interpretations of the excess. I will describe preliminary results that arise from applying our statistical method to the Fermi data.