Population I Cepheids and understanding star formation history of the Small Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

In this paper, we study the age and spatial distributions of Cepheids in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) as a function of their ages using the data from the OGLE III photometric catalogue. A period-age (PA) relation derived for the Classical Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has been used to find the ages of Cepheids. The age distribution of the SMC Classical Cepheids is found to have a peak at log(Age) = 8.40+/-0.10 which suggests that a major star formation event might have occurred in the SMC at about 250+/-50 Myrs ago. It is believed that this star forming burst had been triggered by close interactions of the SMC with the LMC and/or the Milky Way (MW). A comparison of the observed spatial distributions of the Cepheids and open star clusters has also been carried out to study the star formation scenario in the SMC.