Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Millisecond pulsars from accretion-induced collapse as the origin of the Galactic Centre gamma-ray excess signal

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 703–707 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Gamma-ray data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope reveal an unexplained, apparently diffuse, signal from the Galactic bulge1,2,3 that peaks near ~2 GeV with an approximately spherical4 intensity profile ∝ r−2.4 (refs. 3,5), where r is the radial distance to the Galactic centre, that extends to angular radial scales of at least ~10° and possibly to ~20° (refs. 6,7). The origin of this ‘Galactic Centre excess’ (GCE) has been debated, with proposed sources prominently including self-annihilating dark matter1,4 and a hitherto undetected population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs)8. However, the conventional channel for the generation of MSPs has been found to predict too many low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) systems9 and, because of the expected large natal kicks, may not accommodate10 the close spatial correspondence11,12,13 between the GCE signal and stars in the bulge. Here we report a binary population synthesis (BPS) forward model that demonstrates that an MSP population arising from the accretion-induced collapse (AIC) of O–Ne white dwarfs in Galactic bulge binaries can naturally reproduce the morphology, spectral shape and intensity of the GCE signal while also obeying LMXB constraints. Synchrotron emission from MSP-launched cosmic ray electrons and positrons may simultaneously explain the mysterious microwave ‘haze’14 from the inner Galaxy.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Spin-down power liberated by magnetic dipole braking of Galactic bulge MSPs over cosmological history according to our BPS model.
Fig. 2: GCE spectrum at the Earth.
Fig. 3: Broad-band, non-thermal spectrum of the Galactic bulge region.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The model MSP dataset created with our code has been posted to Zenodo at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6342560.

Code availability

Our code is based on the BSE24 code available here: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~jhurley/bsedload.html. We have made some refinements and modifications to BSE to account for the spin evolution of AIC-formed neutron stars post formation. These code extensions are presented in a GitHub repository here: https://github.com/gautam-404/Binary-Evolution/tree/master.

References

  1. Hooper, D. & Goodenough, L. Dark matter annihilation in the Galactic Center as seen by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. Phys. Lett. B 697, 412–428 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Gordon, C. & Macías, O. Dark matter and pulsar model constraints from Galactic Center Fermi-LAT gamma-ray observations. Phys. Rev. D 88, 083521 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Abazajian, K. N., Canac, N., Horiuchi, S. & Kaplinghat, M. Astrophysical and dark matter interpretations of extended gamma-ray emission from the Galactic Center. Phys. Rev. D 90, 023526 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Daylan, T. et al. The characterization of the gamma-ray signal from the central Milky Way: a case for annihilating dark matter. Phys. Dark Universe 12, 1–23 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Calore, F., Cholis, I., McCabe, C. & Weniger, C. A tale of tails: dark matter interpretations of the Fermi GeV excess in light of background model systematics. Phys. Rev. D 91, 063003 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Hooper, D. & Slatyer, T. R. Two emission mechanisms in the Fermi bubbles: a possible signal of annihilating dark matter. Phys. Dark Universe 2, 118–138 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Ackermann, M. et al. Observations of M31 and M33 with the Fermi Large Area Telescope: a galactic center excess in Andromeda? Astrophys. J. 836, 208 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Abazajian, K. N. The consistency of Fermi-LAT observations of the Galactic Center with a millisecond pulsar population in the central stellar cluster. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2011, 010 (2011).

  9. Haggard, D., Heinke, C., Hooper, D. & Linden, T. Low mass X-ray binaries in the inner Galaxy: implications for millisecond pulsars and the GeV excess. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2017, 056 (2017).

  10. Ploeg, H. & Gordon, C. The effect of kick velocities on the spatial distribution of millisecond pulsars and implications for the Galactic center excess. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2021, 020 (2021).

  11. Macias, O. et al. Galactic bulge preferred over dark matter for the Galactic Centre gamma-ray excess. Nat. Astron. 2, 387–392 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Bartels, R., Storm, E., Weniger, C. & Calore, F. The Fermi-LAT GeV excess as a tracer of stellar mass in the Galactic bulge. Nat. Astron. 2, 819–828 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Macias, O. et al. Strong evidence that the Galactic bulge is shining in gamma rays. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2019, 042 (2019).

  14. Planck Collaboration Planck intermediate results. IX. Detection of the Galactic haze with Planck. Astron. Astrophys. 554, A139 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Chen, K. Gamma-ray emission from millisecond pulsars in globular clusters. Nature 352, 695–697 (1991).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Abdo, A. A. et al. A population of gamma-ray emitting globular clusters seen with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. Astron. Astrophys. 524, A75 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Wang, W., Jiang, Z. J. & Cheng, K. S. Contribution to diffuse gamma-rays in the Galactic Centre region from unresolved millisecond pulsars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 358, 263–269 (2005).

  18. Buschmann, M. et al. Foreground mismodeling and the point source explanation of the Fermi Galactic Center excess. Phys. Rev. D 102, 023023 (2020).

  19. Hooper, D. & Mohlabeng, G. The gamma-ray luminosity function of millisecond pulsars and implications for the GeV excess. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2016, 049 (2016).

  20. Ploeg, H., Gordon, C., Crocker, R. & Macias, O. Comparing the Galactic bulge and Galactic disk millisecond pulsars. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2020, 035 (2020).

  21. Nataf, D. M. The controversial star-formation history and helium enrichment of the Milky Way Bulge. Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust. 33, e023 (2016).

  22. Radhakrishnan, V. & Srinivasan, G. On the origin of the recently discovered ultra-rapid pulsar. Curr. Sci. 51, 1096–1099 (1982).

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Ferrario, L. & Wickramasinghe, D. The birth properties of Galactic millisecond radio pulsars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 375, 1009–1016 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Hurley, J. R., Tout, C. A., Wickramasinghe, D. T., Ferrario, L. & Kiel, P. D. Formation of binary millisecond pulsars by accretion-induced collapse of white dwarfs. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 402, 1437–1448 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Miyaji, S., Nomoto, K., Yokoi, K. & Sugimoto, D. Supernova triggered by electron captures. Publ. Astron. Soc. Jpn 32, 303–329 (1980).

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Fryer, C., Benz, W., Herant, M. & Colgate, S. A. What can the accretion-induced collapse of white dwarfs really explain? Astrophys. J. 516, 892–899 (1999).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Kitaura, F. S., Janka, H. T. & Hillebrandt, W. Explosions of O–Ne–Mg cores, the Crab supernova, and subluminous type II-P supernovae. Astron. Astrophys. 450, 345–350 (2006).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Tauris, T. M., Sanyal, D., Yoon, S. C. & Langer, N. Evolution towards and beyond accretion-induced collapse of massive white dwarfs and formation of millisecond pulsars. Astron. Astrophys. 558, A39 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Lyne, A. G. & Lorimer, D. R. High birth velocities of radio pulsars. Nature 369, 127–129 (1994).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  30. Freudenreich, H. T. A COBE model of the Galactic bar and disk. Astrophys. J. 492, 495–510 (1998).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  31. Paczynski, B. Common envelope binaries. In Structure and Evolution of Close Binary Systems; Proc. of the IAU Symposium) Vol. 73 (eds Eggleton, P. et al.) 75 (1976).

  32. de Kool, M. Statistics of cataclysmic variable formation. Astron. Astrophys. 261, 188–202 (1992).

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  33. Abdo, A. A. et al. The second Fermi Large Area Telescope catalog of gamma-ray pulsars. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 208, 17 (2013).

  34. Sudoh, T., Linden, T. & Beacom, J. F. Millisecond pulsars modify the radio-star-formation-rate correlation in quiescent galaxies. Phys. Rev. D 103, 083017 (2021).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  35. Song, D., Macias, O., Horiuchi, S., Crocker, R. M. & Nataf, D. M. Evidence for a high-energy tail in the gamma-ray spectra of globular clusters. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 507, 5161–5176 (2021).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  36. Yuan, Q. & Ioka, K. Testing the millisecond pulsar scenario of the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess with very high energy gamma-rays. Astrophys. J. 802, 124 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  37. Zhang, J. et al. Discriminating different scenarios to account for the cosmic e± excess by synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation. Phys. Rev. D 80, 023007 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  38. Cherenkov Telescope Array Consortium. Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (World Scientific, 2019).

  39. Maier, G. Performance of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. In 36th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2019) Vol. 36 733, eds. Desiati, P., Gaisser, T., and Karle, A. (2019).

  40. Hurley, J. R., Pols, O. R. & Tout, C. A. Comprehensive analytic formulae for stellar evolution as a function of mass and metallicity. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 315, 543–569 (2000).

  41. Hurley, J. R., Tout, C. A. & Pols, O. R. Evolution of binary stars and the effect of tides on binary populations. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 329, 897–928 (2002).

  42. Kiel, P. D. & Hurley, J. R. Populating the galaxy with low-mass X-ray binaries. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 369, 1152–1166 (2006).

  43. Wickramasinghe, D. T., Tout, C. A. & Ferrario, L. The most magnetic stars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 437, 675–681 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  44. Briggs, G. P., Ferrario, L., Tout, C. A., Wickramasinghe, D. T. & Hurley, J. R. Merging binary stars and the magnetic white dwarfs. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 447, 1713–1723 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  45. Hurley, J. R., Tout, C. A. & Pols, O. R. BSE: Binary Star Evolution, Astrophysics Source Code Library, ascl:1303.014, (2013).

  46. Ruiter, A. J. et al. On the formation of neutron stars via accretion-induced collapse in binaries. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 484, 698–711 (2019).

  47. Kroupa, P., Tout, C. A. & Gilmore, G. The distribution of low-mass stars in the Galactic disc. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 262, 545–587 (1993).

  48. Ferrario, L. Constraints on the pairing properties of main-sequence stars from observations of white dwarfs in binary systems. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 426, 2500–2506 (2012).

  49. Duchêne, G. & Kraus, A. Stellar multiplicity. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 51, 269–310 (2013).

  50. Eggleton, P. P. The evolution of low mass stars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 151, 351–364 (1971).

  51. Pols, O. R., Tout, C. A., Eggleton, P. P. & Han, Z. Approximate input physics for stellar modelling. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 274, 964–974 (1995).

  52. Pols, O. R., Schröder, K.-P., Hurley, J. R., Tout, C. A. & Eggleton, P. P. Stellar evolution models for Z = 0.0001 to 0.03. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 298, 525–536 (1998).

  53. Moe, M. & Di Stefano, R. The close binary properties of massive stars in the Milky Way and low-metallicity Magellanic Clouds. Astrophys. J. 778, 95 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  54. Mazeh, T., Simon, M., Prato, L., Markus, B. & Zucker, S. The mass ratio distribution in main-sequence spectroscopic binaries measured by infrared spectroscopy. Astrophys. J. 599, 1344–1356 (2003).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  55. Willems, B. & Kolb, U. Population synthesis of wide binary millisecond pulsars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 337, 1004–1016 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  56. Moe, M. & Di Stefano, R. Mind your Ps and Qs: the interrelation between period (P) and mass-ratio (Q) distributions of binary stars. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 230, 15 (2017).

  57. Provencal, J. L. et al. Whole Earth Telescope observations of the helium interacting binary PG 1346+082 (CR Bootis). Astrophys. J. 480, 383–394 (1997).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  58. Ivanova, N., Heinke, C. O., Rasio, F. A., Belczynski, K. & Fregeau, J. M. Formation and evolution of compact binaries in globular clusters. II. Binaries with neutron stars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 386, 553–576 (2008).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  59. Lyutikov, M. & Toonen, S. Fast-rising blue optical transients and AT2018cow following electron-capture collapse of merged white dwarfs. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 487, 5618–5629 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  60. Portail, M., Wegg, C., Gerhard, O. & Martinez-Valpuesta, I. Made-to-measure models of the Galactic box/peanut bulge: stellar and total mass in the bulge region. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 448, 713–731 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  61. Maraston, C. Evolutionary synthesis of stellar populations: a modular tool. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 300, 872–892 (1998).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  62. Gonthier, P. L. et al. Population syntheses of millisecond pulsars from the Galactic disk and bulge. Astrophys. J. 863, 199 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

R.M.C. thanks M. Krumholz, I. Seitenzahl, G. Rowell, C. Boehm, M. Baring and C. O’Hare for enlightening conversations. N. Rodd and S. Horiuchi are thanked for a close reading of the paper in draft, and T. Slatyer for comments. R.M.C. acknowledges support from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council, award DP190101258 (shared with M. Krumholz). A.J.R. has been supported by the Australian Research Council through grant number FT170100243. Parts of this research were undertaken with the assistance of resources and services from the National Computational Infrastructure, which is supported by the Australian Government through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme and the UNSW HPC Resource Allocation Scheme. The work of O.M. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K14463 and by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Initiative), MEXT, Japan.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Anuj Gautam & Roland M. Crocker

  2. Mathematical Sciences Institute, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Lilia Ferrario

  3. School of Science, University of New South Wales Canberra, The Australian Defence Force Academy, Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, Australia

    Ashley J. Ruiter

  4. School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Harrison Ploeg & Chris Gordon

  5. Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

    Oscar Macias

  6. GRAPPA Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Oscar Macias

Authors
  1. Anuj Gautam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roland M. Crocker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Lilia Ferrario
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Ashley J. Ruiter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Harrison Ploeg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Chris Gordon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Oscar Macias
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

R.M.C. conceived the project in consultation with L.F. and A.J.R. A.G. performed the BPS under the supervision of L.F., A.J.R. and R.M.C. A.G. added new functionality to the existing BSE code to model neutron star period evolution under accretion torques. R.M.C. and H.P. analysed the BPS data to derive model γ-ray luminosities and spectra. C.G. consulted about data and statistical analysis. O.M. performed a number of novel γ-ray template analyses of the GCE in support of the project. An original draft of the paper was written by A.G. This was subsequently amended and extended by R.M.C. in consultation with all the other authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roland M. Crocker.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Astronomy thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Cumulative AIC events and number of model bulge MSPs over cosmological time.

MSP periods P are as labelled in the legend; we define any NS with P < 40 ms as an MSP. The ±1σ error band on the red curve for all AIC events reflects the uncertainties stemming from the bulge stellar mass determination and binarity fraction. (For clarity, equivalent error bands on the other curves are not shown.).

Extended Data Fig. 2 The main evolutionary stages towards, and beyond, accretion induced collapse of a white dwarf.

This schematic is for the model binary whose history is described in the Methods section ‘A typical evolutionary pathway towards AIC’.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Cosmological time vs. donor star type at time of AIC for all AIC events in our simulated population.

Given our empirically-motivated parameter choices, this model binary population is as expected for a host stellar population of total zero age main sequence mass of 2 × 109 M . For more details on stellar types, the reader is referred to S.I. sec. 2.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–24 and Sections 1–14.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gautam, A., Crocker, R.M., Ferrario, L. et al. Millisecond pulsars from accretion-induced collapse as the origin of the Galactic Centre gamma-ray excess signal. Nat Astron 6, 703–707 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01658-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01658-3

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing