Overview
- The peer-reviewed study in Physical Review Letters uses Milky Way formation simulations to show dark-matter annihilation can reproduce the Galactic Center GeV Excess in morphology and brightness.
- The modeled inner halo appears slightly flattened by past mergers, yielding a projected boxy shape that no longer rules out a dark-matter origin on morphological grounds.
- The authors report that millisecond pulsars remain a viable explanation, though matching the signal requires more sources than have been directly confirmed.
- Analyses of small-scale speckling consistent with point sources were not addressed in the new work, leaving a key discriminator unresolved.
- Researchers highlight upcoming observations from the Cherenkov Telescope Array and the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory as potential tie-breakers, with dark matter holding a slight edge on intensity in this analysis.