The inner Galactic bar traced by the VVV survey
  We use the VVV survey observations in bulge regions close to the Galactic
plane to trace the bar inclination at the Galactic latitude b\sim\pm1{\deg} and
to investigate a distinct structure in the inner regions of the bar that was
previously detected at positive latitude (b=+1{\deg}). We use the (J-Ks) colors
of the red clump stars to obtain reddening values on 6 x 6 arcmin scale,
minimizing the problems arising from differential extinction. Dereddened
magnitudes are then used to build the luminosity function of the bulge in
regions of ~0.4 sq deg to obtain the mean red clump magnitudes. These are used
as distance indicators to trace the bar structure. The luminosity function
clearly shows the red clump mean magnitude variation with longitude, as
expected from a large scale bar oriented towards us at positive Galactic
longitude, with a dereddened magnitude varying from Ks_0=13.4 at l=-10{\deg} to
Ks_0=12.4 at l=+10{\deg}. We detect a change in the orientation of the bar in
the central regions with |l|<4{\deg} at b=\pm1{\deg}, in agreement with results
obtained at positive latitudes by other authors. Our results are based on a
different dataset and at different latitude, which shows that this change in
the bar orientation is real. This suggests that there is an inner structure
distinct to the large-scale Galactic bar, with a different orientation angle.
This inner structure could be a secondary, inner bar, with a semi-major axis of
~500 pc that is symmetric with respect to the Galactic plane.
