Reexamination of the possible tidal stream in front of the large Magellanic cloud

It has recently been suggested that the stars in a vertical extension of th e red clump feature seen in LMC color-magnitude diagrams could belong to a tidal stream of material located in front of that galaxy. If this claim is correct, this foreground concentration of stars could contribute significan tly to the rate of gravitational microlensing events observed in the LMC mi crolensing experiments. Here we present radial velocity measurements of sta rs in this so-called "vertical red clump" (VRC) population. The observed st ellar sample, it transpires, has typical LMC kinematics. It is shown that i t is improbable that an intervening tidal stream should have the same distr ibution of radial velocities as the LMC, which is consistent with an earlie r study that shows that the VRC feature is more likely a young stellar popu lation in the main body of that galaxy. However, the kinematic data do not discriminate against the possibility that the VRC is an LMC halo population .