A lack of classical Cepheids in the inner part of the Galactic disc

Recent large-scale infrared surveys have been revealing stellar populations in the inner Galaxy seen through strong interstellar extinction in the disc. In particular, classical Cepheids with their period-luminosity and period-age relations are useful tracers of Galactic structure and evolution. Interesting groups of Cepheids reported recently include four Cepheids in the nuclear stellar disc (NSD), about 200 pc around the Galactic Centre, found by Matsunaga et al. and those spread across the inner part of the disc reported by Dékány and collaborators. We here report our discovery of nearly 30 classical Cepheids towards the bulge region, some of which are common with Dékány et al., and discuss the large impact of the reddening correction on distance estimates for these objects. Assuming that the four Cepheids in the NSD are located at the distance of the Galactic Centre and that the near-infrared extinction law, i.e. wavelength dependency of the interstellar extinction, is not systematically different between the NSD and other bulge lines of sight, most of the other Cepheids presented here are located significantly further than the Galactic Centre. This suggests a lack of Cepheids in the inner 2.5 kpc region of the Galactic disc except the NSD. Recent radio observations show a similar distribution of star-forming regions.