Evolution of the Small Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

Based on the results of N-body simulations on the last 2.5 Gyr evolution of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) interacting with the Galaxy, we firstly show when and where the leading arms (LAs) of the Magellanic stream (MS) can pass through the Galactic plane after the MS formation. We secondly show collisions between the outer Galactic HI disk and the LAs of the MS can create giant HI holes and chimney-like structures in the disk about 0.2 Gyr ago. We thirdly show that a large amount of metal-poor gas is stripped from the SMC and transfered to the LMC during the tidal interaction between the Clouds and the Galaxy about 0.2 and 1.3 Gyr ago. We thus propose that this metal-poor gas can closely be associated with the origin of LMC's young and intermediate-age stars and star clusters with distinctively low-metallicities with [Fe/H] < -0.6.

4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of ``Galaxies in the Local Volume'', Sydney, 8 to 13 July, 2007

References in corpus (4)

• Formation and evolution of the Magellanic Clouds. I.Origin of structural, kinematical, and chemical properties of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Calcium II Triplet Spectroscopy of LMC Red Giants. I. Abundances and Velocities for a Sample of Populous Clusters
• N-body simulations of the Magellanic Stream
• Ages and metallicities of star clusters: new calibrations and diagnostic diagrams from visible integrated spectra