26th Australian Institute of Physics Congress and the Australian and New Zealand Conference on Optics and Photonics

Exploring the Millisecond Pulsar Origin of the Galactic Center Excess with the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

Not scheduled

1h 30m

Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Contributed Oral AIP | Astroparticle Physics (GAP) Parallel sessions

Description

The Galactic Centre Excess has long attracted attention as a potential signature of dark matter self-annihilation. However, an astrophysical origin remains a possible alternative, with one leading hypothesis attributing the excess to an unresolved population of millisecond pulsars. The next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory may discriminate between these hypotheses by detecting morphologies indicative of an underlying population of point sources.

Following the results of Gautam et al. (2022), we construct a model population of MSPs in the Galactic Center region and calculate their gamma-ray flux. We investigate the prospects for CTAO to detect MSPs by analysing their gamma-ray emission with GammaPy and assessing the observatory’s sensitivity to a MSP signature. We also investigate whether detection prospects are affected by using different diffusion regimes, or populations with different characteristics.