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Description
We report new spectroscopic observations obtained with the Michigan/Magellan Fiber System of 308 red giants (RGs) located in two fields near the photometric center of the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This sample consists of 131 stars observed in previous studies (in one field) and 177 newly observed stars (in the second field) selected specifically to more reliably establish the metallicity and age distributions of the bar. For each star, we measure its heliocentric line-of-sight velocity, surface gravity, and metallicity from its high-resolution spectrum (effective temperatures come from photometric colors). The spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams- modulo small offsets in surface gravities-reveal good agreement with model isochrones. The mean metallicity of the 177-RG sample is [Fe/H]=-0.76+/-0.02 with a metallicity dispersion {sigma}=0.28+/-0.03. The corresponding metallicity distribution-corrected for selection effects-is well fitted by two Gaussian components: one metal-rich with a mean -0.66+/-0.02 and a standard deviation 0.17+/-0.01, and the other metal-poor with -1.20+/-0.24 and 0.41+/-0.06. The metal-rich and metal-poor populations contain approximately 85% and 15% of stars, respectively. We also confirm that the velocity dispersion in the bar center decreases significantly from 31.2+/-4.3 to 18.7+/-1.9km/s with increasing metallicity over the range -2.09 to -0.38. Individual stellar masses are estimated using the spectroscopic surface gravities and the known luminosities. We find that lower mass, hence older, RGs have larger metallicity dispersion and lower mean metallicity than the higher-mass, younger RGs. The estimated masses, however, extend to implausibly low values (~0.1M_{sun}_), making it impossible to obtain an absolute age-metallicity or age distribution of the bar.
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