An anomalous emission component at energies of a few GeV and located towards the inner Galaxy is present in the Fermi -LAT data .
It is known as the Fermi -LAT GeV excess .
Using almost 8 years of data we reanalyze the characteristics of this excess with SkyFACT , a novel tool that combines image reconstruction with template fitting techniques .
We find that an emission profile that traces stellar mass in the boxy and nuclear bulge provides the best description of the excess emission , providing strong circumstantial evidence that the excess is due to a stellar source population in the Galactic bulge .
We find a luminosity to stellar mass ratio of ( 2.1 \pm 0.2 ) \times 10 ^ { 27 } \mathrm { erg s ^ { -1 } M _ { \odot } ^ { -1 } } for the boxy bulge , and of ( 1.4 \pm 0.6 ) \times 10 ^ { 27 } \mathrm { erg s ^ { -1 } M _ { \odot } ^ { -1 } } for the nuclear bulge .
Stellar mass related templates are preferred over conventional DM profiles with high statistical significance .