Population Studies of the Egret Sources

Abstract

We present preliminary modelling of the populations of gamma-ray point sources observable by AGILE as constrained by the 3rd EGRET source catalog. A simple analysis of latitude distributions shows that no more than half of the EGRET sources are derived from an isotropic distribution. To analyze the two-dimenstional distribution, we wrote Monte Carlo simulations to produce model populations which we compared to the EGRET catalog. We examined models containing an isotropic component and one or two galactic components; preliminary results indicate that while one galactic component produces a spatial distribution consistent with the EGRET sources, the resulting flux distributions are inconsistent. Simultaneous comparison of spatial and flux distributions will allow physical models to be constrained.