Abstract
Recently, Dixon et al. have reanalyzed the EGRET data, finding a statistically significant diffuse γ-ray emission from the Galactic halo. We show that this emission can naturally be explained within a previously proposed model for baryonic dark matter, in which γ-rays are produced through the interaction of high-energy cosmic-ray protons with cold H2 clouds clumped into dark clusters; these dark clusters supposedly populate the outer Galactic halo and can show up in microlensing observations. Our estimate for the halo γ-ray flux turns out to be in remarkably good agreement with the discovery by Dixon et al. in 1998. We also address future prospects to test our predictions.
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