Gamma Rays From The Galactic Center and the WMAP Haze

Understand

Recently, an analysis of data from the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope has revealed a flux of gamma rays concentrated around the inner ~0.5 degrees of the Milky Way, with a spectrum that is sharply peaked at 2-4 GeV.

• If interpreted as the products of annihilating dark matter, this signal implies that the dark matter consists of particles with a mass between 7.3 and 9.2 GeV annihilating primarily to charged leptons.
• This mass range is very similar to that required to accommodate the signals reported by CoGeNT and DAMA/LIBRA.
• In addition to gamma rays, the dark matter is predicted to produce energetic electrons and positrons in the Inner Galaxy, which emit synchrotron photons as a result of their interaction with the galactic magnetic field.