15 SMC cluster VI photometry

The challenges in understanding the SMC chemical evolution are related to a very slow star formation rate (SFR) combined with bursts triggered by the multiple interactions between the SMC and the Large Magellanic Cloud, a significant (~0.5dex) metallicity dispersion for the SMC cluster population younger than about 7.5Gyr, and multiple chemical evolution models tracing very different paths through the observed age-metallicity relation of the SMC.

There is no doubt that these processes were complex. Therefore, a step-by-step strategy is required in order to better understand the SMC chemical evolution. We adopted an existing framework to split the SMC into regions on the sky, and we focus on the west halo in this work, which contains the oldest and most metal-poor stellar populations and is moving away from the SMC, that is, in an opposite motion with respect to the Magellanic Bridge.