On the spatial distribution of stellar populations in the large magellaniccloud

We measure the angular correlation function of stars in a region of the Lar ge Magellanic Cloud (LMC) that spans 2.degrees 0 x 1.degrees 5. We find tha t the correlation functions of stellar populations are represented well by exponential functions of the angular separation for separations between 2' and 40' (corresponding to similar to 30 and 550 pc for an LMC distance of 5 0 kpc). The inner boundary is set by the presence of distinct, highly corre lated structures, which are the more familiar stellar clusters, and the out er boundary is set by the observed region's size and the presence of two pr incipal centers of star formation within the region. We also find that the normalization and scale length of the correlation function changes systemat ically with the mean age of the stellar population. The existence of positi ve correlation at large separations (similar to 300 pc), even in the younge st population, argues for large-scale hierarchical structure in current sta r formation. The evolution of the angular correlation toward lower normaliz ations and longer scale lengths with stellar age argues for the dispersion of stars with time. We show that a simple, stochastic, self-propagating sta r formation model is qualitatively consistent with this behavior of the cor relation function.