A Washington photometric survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud field star population

Abstract

We present photometry for an unprecedented database of some 5.5 million stars distributed throughout the Large Magellanic Cloud main body, from 21 fields covering a total area of 7.6 deg2, obtained from Washington CT1T2 CTIO 4 m MOSAIC data. Extensive artificial star tests over the whole mosaic image data set and the observed behavior of the photometric errors with magnitude demonstrate the accuracy of the morphology and clearly delineate the position of the main features in the color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs). The representative T1(MS TO) mags are on average ∼0.5 mag brighter than the T1 mags for the 100% completeness level of the respective field, allowing us to derive an accurate age estimate. We have analyzed the CMD Hess diagrams and used the peaks in star counts at the main sequence turnoff and red clump (RC) locations to age date the most dominant sub-population (or “representative” population) in the stellar population mix. The metallicity of this representative population is estimated from the locus of the most populous red giant branch track. We use these results to derive age and metallicity estimates for all of our fields. The analyzed fields span age and metallicity ranges covering most of the galaxy’s lifetime and chemical enrichment, i.e., ages and metallicities between ∼1 and 13 Gyr and ∼−0.2 and −1.2 dex, respectively. We show that the dispersions associated with the mean ages and metallicities represent in general a satisfactory estimate of the age/metallicity spread (∼1–3 Gyr/0.2–0.3 dex), although a few subfields have a slightly larger age/metallicity spread. Finally, we revisit the study of the vertical structure (VS) phenomenon, a striking feature composed of stars that extend from the bottom, bluest end of the RC to ∼0.45 mag fainter. We confirm that the VS phenomenon is not clearly seen in most of the studied fields and suggest that its occurrence is linked to some other condition(s) in addition to the appropriate age, metallicity, and the necessary red giant star density.