Resolving Galactic center GeV excess with MSP-like sources

Excess of gamma rays around the Galactic center (GC) observed in the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data is one of the most intriguing features in the gamma-ray sky. The spherical morphology and the spectral energy distribution with a peak around a few GeV are consistent with emission from annihilation of dark matter particles. Other possible explanations include a distribution of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). One of the caveats of the MSP hypothesis is the relatively small number of associated MSPs near the GC. In this paper we perform a multi-class classification of Fermi-LAT sources using machine learning and determine the contribution from unassociated MSP-like sources near the GC. The spectral energy distribution, spatial morphology, and the source count distribution are consistent with expectations for a population of MSPs that can explain the gamma-ray excess. Possible caveats of the contribution from the unassociated MSP-like sources are discussed.
Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables, probabilistic classification of sources is available online at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10458464, v2: references and discussions added