Discovery of the Pre-Main Sequence Population of the Stellar Association LH 95 in the Large Magellanic Cloud with Hubble Space Telescope ACS Observations

We report the discovery of an extraordinary number of pre-main sequence (PMS) stars in the vicinity of the stellar association LH 95 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Using the {\em Advanced Camera for Surveys} on-board the {\em Hubble} Space Telescope in wide-field mode we obtained deep high-resolution imaging of the main body of the association and of a nearby representative LMC background field. These observations allowed us to construct the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of the association in unprecedented detail, and to decontaminate the CMD for the average LMC stellar population. The most significant result is the direct detection of a substantial population of PMS stars and their clustering properties with respect to the distribution of the higher mass members of the association. Although LH 95 represents a rather modest star forming region, our photometry, with a detection limit $V$ \lsim 28 mag, reveals in its vicinity more than 2,500 PMS stars with masses down to $\sim 0.3$ M{\solar}. Our observations offer, thus, a new perspective of a typical LMC association: The stellar content of LH 95 is found to extend from bright OB stars to faint red PMS stars, suggesting a fully populated Initial Mass Function (IMF) from the massive blue giants down to the sub-solar mass regime.