ANALYSIS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE SPATIO-SPECTRAL MORPHOLOGY OF THE FERMI BUBBLES

Abstract

The Fermi Bubbles are γ-ray structures extending from the center of the Milky Way to ±50◦ Galactic latitude that were discovered in data obtained by the Fermi/LAT instrument. Their origin and power source remain uncertain. To help address this uncertainty, here we use a template-free reconstruction of ten years of all-sky Fermi /LAT data provided by Platz et al. (2023) to carry out a pixel-by-pixel spectral analysis of the Bubbles. We recover the position-dependent spectral shape and normalization that would be required for parent proton or electron cosmic ray populations to produce the Bubbles’ observed γ-ray spectra. We find that models in which the γ-ray emission is driven by either hadronic or leptonic processes can explain the data equally well. The cosmic ray population driving the emission must have either broken power-law or exponentially cut-off spectra, with break or cutoff energies that are almost constant with latitude but spectral indices below the break that harden towards the Bubbles’ southern tip. For the leptonic channel, reproducing the observed position-dependent γ-ray spectrum also requires a cosmic ray electron energy density that grows with distance from the Galactic plane and increases towards the edges of the Bubbles, implying either relativistic transport from the nucleus or in-situ re-acceleration at the bubble edge. © 2026, National University of Ireland Maynooth. All rights reserved.