The Split Red Clump of the Galactic Bulge from OGLE-III

Understand

The red clump is found to be split into two components along several sightlines toward the Galactic Bulge.

• This split is detected with high significance toward the areas (-3.5<l<1,b<-5) and (l,b)=(0,+5.2), i.e., along the Bulge minor axis and at least 5 degrees off the plane.
• The fainter (hereafter ``main'') component is the one that more closely follows the distance-longitude relation of the Bulge red clump.
• The main component is ~0.5 magnitudes fainter than the secondary component and with an overall approximately equal population.