Probing the LMC age gap at intermediate cluster masses

TL;DR

This study investigates the age distribution of low-mass star clusters in the LMC, finding none within the 3-10 Gyr age gap, thus challenging previous notions of a gap in cluster formation.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new statistical CMD comparison method to accurately determine ages of sparse, low-mass clusters in the LMC.

Findings

No low-mass clusters in the 3-10 Gyr age gap.

Clusters studied are between 100 Myrs and 2 Gyrs old.

Method effectively distinguishes cluster ages from field stars.

Abstract

The LMC has a rich star cluster system spanning a wide range of ages and masses. One striking feature of the LMC cluster system is the existence of an age gap between 3-10 Gyrs. But this feature is not as clearly seen among field stars. Three LMC fields containing relatively poor and sparse clusters whose integrated colours are consistent with those of intermediate age simple stellar populations have been imaged in BVI with the Optical Imager (SOI) at the Southern Telescope for Astrophysical Research (SOAR). A total of 6 clusters, 5 of them with estimated initial masses M < 10^4M_sun, were studied in these fields. Photometry was performed and Colour-Magnitude Diagrams (CMD) were built using standard point spread function fitting methods. The faintest stars measured reach V ~ 23. The CMD was cleaned from field contamination by making use of the three-dimensional colour and magnitude space available in order to select stars in excess relative to the field. A statistical CMD comparison method was developed for this purpose. The subtraction method has proven to be successful, yielding cleaned CMDs consistent with a simple stellar population. The intermediate age candidates were found to be the oldest in our sample, with ages between 1-2 Gyrs. The remaining clusters found in the SOAR/SOI have ages ranging from 100 to 200 Myrs. Our analysis has conclusively shown that none of the relatively low-mass clusters studied by us belongs to the LMC age-gap.