Dust and Stellar Populations in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

We present an analysis of line-of-sight extinction measurements obtained using data from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey, which provides 4-filter photometry for millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We find that visual extinctions are typically larger by several tenths of a magnitude for stars with effective temperatures > 12000 K, than for stars with effective temperatures between 5500 K and 6500 K. Several repercussions of this population-dependent extinction are discussed. In particular, LMC distance measurements that utilize old stellar populations (such as red clump stars), but use extinctions derived from OB stars, may be biased low. Population-dependent extinction affects the interpretation of color-magnitude diagrams and results in an effective absorption law that is steeper than that intrinsic to the dust for unresolved stellar systems. We further explore the relation between the stellar populations and dust by comparing our extinction map to the 100mu image of the region and identifying potential heating sources of the dust. We conclude that 100mu flux should be used with caution as a star formation tracer, particularly for studies of star formation within galaxies. Finally, we reproduce the observed extinction variation between the hot and cold stellar populations with a simple model of the distribution of the stars and dust where the scaleheight of the cooler stars is >> than that of the dust (which is twice that of the OB stars). (Abridged Abstract)