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

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. For sightlines further from the plane, the difference in brightness increases, and more stars are found in the secondary component than in the main component. The two components have very nearly equal (V-I) color.
Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table