Wavelet-Based Techniques for the Gamma-Ray Sky

Understand

We demonstrate how the image analysis technique of wavelet decomposition can be applied to the gamma-ray sky to separate emission on different angular scales.

• New structures on scales that differ from the scales of the conventional astrophysical foreground and background uncertainties can be robustly extracted, allowing a model-independent characterization with no presumption of exact signal morphology.
• As a test case, we generate mock gamma-ray data to demonstrate our ability to extract extended signals without assuming a fixed spatial template.
• For some point source luminosity functions, our technique also allows us to differentiate a diffuse signal in gamma-rays from dark matter annihilation and extended gamma-ray point source populations in a data-driven way.