Interstellar extinction and the distribution of stellar populations in
  the direction of the ultra-deep Chandra Galactic field
  We studied the stellar population in the central 6.6x6.6arcmin,region of the
ultra-deep (1Msec) Chandra Galactic field - the "Chandra bulge field" (CBF)
approximately 1.5 degrees away from the Galactic Center - using the Hubble
Space Telescope ACS/WFC blue (F435W) and red (F625W) images. We mainly focus on
the behavior of red clump giants - a distinct stellar population, which is
known to have an essentially constant intrinsic luminosity and color. By
studying the variation in the position of the red clump giants on a spatially
resolved color-magnitude diagram, we confirm the anomalous total-to-selective
extinction ratio, as reported in previous work for other Galactic bulge fields.
We show that the interstellar extinction in this area is <A_(F625W)>= 4 on
average, but varies significantly between ~3-5 on angular scales as small as 1
arcminute. Using the distribution of red clump giants in an
extinction-corrected color-magnitude diagram, we constrain the shape of a
stellar-mass distribution model in the direction of this ultra-deep Chandra
field, which will be used in a future analysis of the population of X-ray
sources. We also show that the adopted model for the stellar density
distribution predicts an infrared surface brightness in the direction of the
"Chandra bulge field" in good agreement (i.e. within ~15%) with the actual
measurements derived from the Spitzer/IRAC observations.
