A gamma-ray look to the inner Galaxy

For more than 10 years, an unexpected gamma-ray component over astrophysical backgrounds has been detected at GeV energies towards the Galactic center in the data of the Fermi-Large Area Telescope. Initially, this excess was considered to be hinting at particle dark matter annihilating in the Galactic dark matter halo. However, recent works have demonstrated that the excess is better explained by a population of millisecond pulsar-like sources in the stellar bulge of the Milky Way, so far undetected at other wavelengths. 
After a short review of the topic, I will discuss the results of the most recent studies regarding the properties of the excess, and the opportunities this endeavour offers us to discover and constrain new physics, including dark matter and high energy astrophysics phenomena.