The stellar population and star clusters around six regions in the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are studied to understand the correlation between star
formation and cluster formation rates. We used the stellar database of the OGLE
II LMC survey and the star cluster catalogues. The observed distribution of
stellar density on the colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) were compared with the
synthetic ones generated from the stellar evolutionary models. By minimising
the reduced chi-square values, the star formation history of the regions were
obtained in terms of the star formation rates (SFRs). All the regions were
found to show large SFRs between the ages 500 Myr - 2 Gyr with lower values for
younger and older ages. The correlated peak in the cluster and SFRs is found
for ages sim 1 Gyr, and for ages less than 100 Myr. Five out of six regions
show significant cluster formation in the 100 - 300 Myr, while the SFRs were
found to be very low. This indicates anti-correlation between star and cluster
formation rates for the 100 - 300 Myr age range. A possible reason may be that
the stars are predominantly formed in clusters, whether bound or unbound, as a
result of star formation during the above age range. The enhanced cluster
formation rate at 100 - 300 Myr age range could be correlated with the
encounter of LMC with the Small Magellanic Cloud, while the enhanced star and
cluster formation at ∼ 1 Gyr does not correspond to any interaction. This
could indicate that the star formation induced by interaction is biased towards
group or cluster formation of stars.Comment: to appear in A&A, 12 pages including 7 figure
