Chemical and kinematic study of Large Magellanic Cloud RGB stars

Abstract

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the closest massive satellite of the Milky Way (MW), and its proximity allows us to study its stellar populations with great detail, both with resolved photometry and spectroscopy. In turn, this is crucial to unveil its star formation and chemical enrichment histories, and also to investigate the effects that gravitational interactions with other systems (as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the MW) may induce on an irregular galaxy. The LMC is characterized by a still on-going star formation activity, as traced by the wide range of ages and metallicities of its stellar populations. However, most of the information about the chemistry and the kinematics of this galaxy has been obtained from low-resolution spectra, which do not allow to draw firm conclusions on many crucial open questions. In particular, (1) we still miss a homogeneous determination of the LMC metallicity distribution; (2) the metal-poor component is still poorly known and described; and (3) we have no conclusive information on the existence of metallicity gradients, which would suggest to spatially inhomegeneous star formation events. To properly address these issues, we analysed nearly 500 high-resolution FLAMES spectra of red giant stars belonging to the LMC field, the largest set of high- resolution spectra of LMC stars analysed so far in a homogeneous way.