Common Origin of Two RR Lyrae Populations and the Double Red Clump in the Milky Way Bulge

TL;DR

This study suggests that the two RR Lyrae populations and the double red clump in the Milky Way bulge originate from the same multiple stellar populations, distinguished mainly by helium abundance differences.

Contribution

It demonstrates that small helium abundance differences can explain the observed features in the bulge, linking RR Lyrae and red clump populations through a unified model.

Findings

Period-shift in RR Lyrae stars is due to helium abundance differences.

Double red clump is reproduced by extending models to solar metallicity.

Both phenomena are manifestations of the same multiple population process.

Abstract

A recent survey toward the Milky Way bulge has discovered two sequences of RR Lyrae stars on the period-amplitude diagram with a maximum period-shift of {\Delta}log P = 0.015 between the two populations. Here we show, from our synthetic horizontal-branch models, that this period-shift is most likely due to the small difference in helium abundance ({\Delta}Y = 0.012) between the first and second-generation stars (G1 and G2), as is the case in our models for the inner halo globular clusters with similar metallicity ([Fe/H] = -1.1). We further show that the observed double red clump (RC) in the bulge is naturally reproduced when these models are extended to solar metallicity following {\Delta}Y/{\Delta}Z = 6 for G2, as would be expected from the chemical evolution models. Therefore, the two populations of RR Lyrae stars and the double RC observed in the bulge appear to be different manifestations of the same multiple population phenomenon in the metal-poor and metal-rich regimes respectively.