title: Kinematic evidence for an old stellar halo in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
abstract: The oldest and most metal-poor Milky Way stars form a kinematically hot halo, which motivates the two major formation scenarios for our galaxy: extended hierarchical accretion and rapid collapse. RR Lyrae stars are excellent tracers of old and metal-poor populations. We measured the kinematics of 43 RR Lyrae stars in the inner regions of the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy. The velocity dispersion equals 53 +/- 10 kilometers per second, which indicates that a kinematically hot metal-poor old halo also exists in the LMC. This result suggests that our galaxy and smaller late-type galaxies such as the LMC have similar early formation histories.
authors.affiliation: Department of Astronomy, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Aveñida Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile. dante@astro.puc.cl
authors.forename: Dante
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Minniti
authors.forename: Jura
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Borissova
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rejkuba
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Alves
authors.forename: Kem H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.forename: Kenneth C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Freeman