Mapping the outer bulge with RRab stars from the VVV Survey

Abstract

The VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) is a near-IR time-domain survey of the Galactic bulge and southern plane. One of the main goals of this survey is to reveal the 3D structure of the Milky Way through their variable stars. Particularly the RR Lyrae stars have been massively discovered in the inner regions of the bulge ($-8^{\circ }\lesssim b\lesssim -1^{\circ }$) by optical surveys such as OGLE and MACHO but leaving an unexplored window of more than $\sim 47$ sq deg ($-10.0^{\circ }\lesssim \ell \lesssim +10.7^{\circ }$ and $-10.3^{\circ }\lesssim b\lesssim -8.0^{\circ }$) observed by the VVV Survey. Our goal is to characterize the RR Lyrae stars in the outer bulge in terms of their periods, amplitudes, Fourier coefficients, and distances, in order to evaluate the 3D structure of the bulge in this area. The distance distribution of RR Lyrae stars will be compared to the one of red clump stars that is known to trace a X-shaped structure in order to determine if these two different stellar populations share the same Galactic distribution. We report the detection of more than 1000 RR Lyrae ab-type stars in the VVV Survey located in the outskirts of the Galactic bulge. Some of them are possibly associated with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. We calculated colors, reddening, extinction, and distances of the detected RR Lyrae stars in order to determine the outer bulge 3D structure. Our main result is that, at the low galactic latitudes mapped here, the RR Lyrae stars trace a centrally concentrated spheroidal distribution. This is a noticeably different spatial distribution to the one traced by red clump stars known to follow a bar and X-shape structure. We estimate the completeness of our RRab sample in $80\%$ for $K_{\mathrm{s}}\lesssim 15$ mag.

arXiv comment26 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

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