Red giant stellar parameters in the LMC bar

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.