Astroparticle Seminar

Understanding High Energy Gamma-Ray Emission from the Galactic Center

Tim Linden

UC Santa Cruz

Recent data taken at TeV energies (by Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes) and at GeV energies (by the Fermi-LAT) have opened a new window into studies of the Galactic center. The high angular resolution of these observations make them especially well-suited to understanding the many energetic processes occurring in this dense region. Interestingly, Fermi-LAT observations have uncovered an apparent excess of ~1 GeV photons peaked around the galactic center compared to the smooth power-law observed by TeV telescopes. In this talk, I will discuss several convincing models for the peculiar emission spectrum and morphology in this region, including the annihilation of particle dark matter, a yet-undiscovered population of millisecond pulsars, and hadronic emission processes from the central black hole.