Staying away from the bar: the local dynamical signature of slow and
  fast bars in the Milky Way
  Both the three-dimensional density of red clump giants and the gas kinematics
in the inner Galaxy indicate that the pattern speed of the Galactic bar could
be much lower than previously estimated. Here, we show that such slow bar
models are unable to reproduce the bimodality observed in local stellar
velocity space. We do so by computing the response of stars in the Solar
neighbourhood to the gravitational potential of slow and fast bars, in terms of
their perturbed distribution function in action-angle space up to second order,
as well as by identifying resonantly trapped orbits. We also check that the
bimodality is unlikely to be produced through perturbations from spiral arms,
and conclude that, contrary to gas kinematics, local stellar kinematics still
favour a fast bar in the Milky Way, with a pattern speed of the order of almost
twice (and no less than 1.8 times) the circular frequency at the Sun's
position. This leaves open the question of the nature of the long flat
extension of the bar in the Milky Way.
