The dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies (dSphs) of the Milky Way are some of the most dark matter (DM) dominated objects known. We report on $\gamma$-ray observations of Milky Way dSphs based on six years of Fermi Large Area Telescope data processed with the new Pass8 event-level analysis. None of the dSphs are significantly detected in $\gamma$ rays, and we present upper limits on the DM annihilation cross section from a combined analysis of 15 dSphs. These constraints are among the strongest and most robust to date and lie below the canonical thermal relic cross section for DM of mass $\lesssim 100\mathrm{GeV}$ annihilating via quark and $\tau$-lepton channels.

We present a catalog of high-energy gamma-ray sources detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT), the primary science instrument on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi), during the first 11 months of the science phase of the mission, which began on 2008 August 4. The First Fermi-LAT catalog (1FGL) contains 1451 sources detected and characterized in the 100 MeV to 100 GeV range. Source detection was based on the average flux over the 11-month period, and the threshold likelihood Test Statistic is 25, corresponding to a significance of just over 4 sigma. The 1FGL catalog includes source location regions, defined in terms of elliptical fits to the 95% confidence regions and power-law spectral fits as well as flux measurements in 5 energy bands for each source. In addition, monthly light curves are provided. Using a protocol defined before launch we have tested for several populations of gamma-ray sources among the sources in the catalog. For individual LAT-detected sources we provide firm identifications or plausible associations with sources in other astronomical catalogs. Identifications are based on correlated variability with counterparts at other wavelengths, or on spin or orbital periodicity. For the catalogs and association criteria that we have selected, 630 of the sources are unassociated. Care was taken to characterize the sensitivity of the results to the model of interstellar diffuse gamma-ray emission used to model the bright foreground, with the result that 161 sources at low Galactic latitudes and toward bright local interstellar clouds are flagged as having properties that are strongly dependent on the model or as potentially being due to incorrectly modeled structure in the Galactic diffuse emission.

We present an incremental version (4FGL-DR3, for Data Release 3) of the fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) catalog of γ-ray sources. Based on the first 12 years of science data in the energy range from 50 MeV to 1 TeV, it contains 6658 sources. The analysis improves on that used for the 4FGL catalog over eight years of data: more sources are fit with curved spectra, we introduce a more robust spectral parameterization for pulsars, and we extend the spectral points to 1 TeV. The spectral parameters, spectral energy distributions, and associations are updated for all sources. Light curves are rebuilt for all sources with 1 yr intervals (not 2 month intervals). Among the 5064 original 4FGL sources, 16 were deleted, 112 are formally below the detection threshold over 12 yr (but are kept in the list), while 74 are newly associated, 10 have an improved association, and seven associations were withdrawn. Pulsars are split explicitly between young and millisecond pulsars. Pulsars and binaries newly detected in LAT sources, as well as more than 100 newly classified blazars, are reported. We add three extended sources and 1607 new point sources, mostly just above the detection threshold, among which eight are considered identified, and 699 have a plausible counterpart at other wavelengths. We discuss the degree-scale residuals to the global sky model and clusters of soft unassociated point sources close to the Galactic plane, which are possibly related to limitations of the interstellar emission model and missing extended sources.

The region around the Galactic Center (GC) is now well established to be brighter at energies of a few GeV than what is expected from conventional models of diffuse gamma-ray emission and catalogs of known gamma-ray sources. We study the GeV excess using 6.5 yr of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We characterize the uncertainty of the GC excess spectrum and morphology due to uncertainties in cosmic-ray source distributions and propagation, uncertainties in the distribution of interstellar gas in the Milky Way, and uncertainties due to a potential contribution from the Fermi bubbles. We also evaluate uncertainties in the excess properties due to resolved point sources of gamma rays. The GC is of particular interest, as it would be expected to have the brightest signal from annihilation of weakly interacting massive dark matter (DM) particles. However, control regions along the Galactic plane, where a DM signal is not expected, show excesses of similar amplitude relative to the local background. Based on the magnitude of the systematic uncertainties, we conservatively report upper limits for the annihilation cross-section as a function of particle mass and annihilation channel.

The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has provided the most detailed view to date of the emission toward the Galactic center (GC) in high-energy γ-rays. This paper describes the analysis of data taken during the first 62 months of the mission in the energy range 1–100 GeV from a 15° × 15° region about the direction of the GC. Specialized interstellar emission models (IEMs) are constructed to enable the separation of the γ-ray emissions produced by cosmic ray particles interacting with the interstellar gas and radiation fields in the Milky Way into that from the inner ∼1 kpc surrounding the GC, and that from the rest of the Galaxy. A catalog of point sources for the 15° × 15° region is self-consistently constructed using these IEMs: the First Fermi-LAT Inner Galaxy Point Source Catalog (1FIG). The spatial locations, fluxes, and spectral properties of the 1FIG sources are presented, and compared with γ-ray point sources over the same region taken from existing catalogs. After subtracting the interstellar emission and point-source contributions a residual is found. If templates that peak toward the GC are used to model the positive residual the agreement with the data improves, but none of the additional templates tried account for all of its spatial structure. The spectrum of the positive residual modeled with these templates has a strong dependence on the choice of IEM.

The energy spectrum of cosmic rays above $2.5\times {10}^{18}\mathrm{eV}$, derived from 20 000 events recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory, is described. The spectral index $\gamma$ of the particle flux, $J\propto E^{-\gamma }$, at energies between $4\times {10}^{18}\mathrm{eV}$ and $4\times {10}^{19}\mathrm{eV}$ is $2.69\pm 0.02(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.06(\mathrm{syst})$, steepening to $4.2\pm 0.4(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.06(\mathrm{syst})$ at higher energies. The hypothesis of a single power law is rejected with a significance greater than 6 standard deviations. The data are consistent with the prediction by Greisen and by Zatsepin and Kuz’min.