Interpreting the LHAASO Galactic diffuse emission data

Recently, the Large High-Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) collaboration has obtained a measurement of the gamma-ray diffuse emission in the ultra-high energy range, 10–10^3 TeV after masking the contribution of known sources. The measurement is provided in two Galactic regions and appears to be 2–3 times higher than the gamma-ray signal expected from the hadronic interactions of diffuse cosmic rays with the interstellar medium, potentially implying that either additional emission sources exist or cosmic ray intensities have spatial variations. In this work, we calculate the hadronic gamma-ray diffuse emission outside the masks, considering a realistic gas distribution. We present a comprehensive calculation of the emission, which includes systematic uncertainties in the gas content of the Galactic disk, in the energy and spatial distribution of cosmic rays, as well as in the hadronic interaction cross-sections. Our results show that these factors mitigate the tension between data and predictions. The LHAASO data appear compatible with our baseline model in the outer Galactic region. In the inner region, the data show an excess with respect to the predictions below ∼ 50 TeV, while at higher energies they are well described by our model. We argue that two plausible explanations for enhanced gamma-ray emission — unresolved sources and CR spectral hardening in the inner Galaxy — are likely suppressed by the LHAASO masking strategy, which excludes regions where both effects are expected to be most prominent.