Speaker: Christoph Weniger (University of Amsterdam)
Abstract:
I will summarize our current knowledge about the GeV bulge emission. A leading astrophysical interpretation of the emission is that it comes from thousands of hitherto unknown millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in the Galactic bulge. I will discuss in some detail a wavelet fluctuation analysis of the gamma-ray emission from the inner Galaxy, which we did recently to test this hypothesis. We found strong support for the MSP hypothesis. However, systematic uncertainties remain large, and a clear detection of the bulge MSPs in radio observations will be necessary for a solid confirmation. If as significant number of MSPs is found in the Galactic bulge, this will reduce, and possibly eliminate, the need for more exotic explanations in terms of dark matter annihilation. I will close with our plans to search for these sources in radio, using MeerKAT (planned for 2018) and telescopes like the GBT and the VLA.
