Diffuse galactic annihilation radiation

Abstract

The study reports observations of positron annihilation radiation from the inner region of the Galaxy which show that there are two components of the radiation: a steady, diffuse Galactic component and a variable component from discrete, presumably compact sources. The existence of the variable component is supported by the ensemble of all narrow FOV 511 keV line observations, including recent detections with OSSE. The fit of this ensemble to a time-independent source distribution can be excluded at the approximately 3-sigma level. The same ensemble, combined with the broad FOV SMM observations of Galactic 511 keV line emission, sets constraints on the Galactic distribution of the diffuse component.