Anisotropies in the gamma‐ray sky from millisecond pulsars
2011
Pulsars emerge in the Fermi era as a sizable population of gamma-ray sources. Millisecond
pulsars (MSPs) constitute an older subpopulation whose sky distribution extends to high
Galactic latitudes, and it has been suggested that unresolved members of this class may
contribute a significant fraction of the measured large-scale isotropic gamma-ray background
(IGRB). We investigate the possible energy-dependent contribution of unresolved MSPs to
the anisotropy of the Fermi-measured IGRB. For observationally motivated MSP population
models, we show that the preliminary Fermi anisotropy measurement places an interesting
constraint on the abundance of MSPs in the Galaxy and the typical MSP flux, about an order of
magnitude stronger than constraints on this population derived from the intensity of the IGRB
alone. We also examine the possibility of an MSP component in the IGRB mimicking a dark
matter signal in anisotropy-based searches, and conclude that the energy dependence of an
anisotropy signature would distinguish MSPs from all but very light dark matter candidates.
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