Calcium II Triplet Spectroscopy of LMC Red Giants. I. Abundances and Velocities for a Sample of Populous Clusters

Abridged Abstract - Utilizing the FORS2 instrument on the VLT, we have obtained near infrared spectra for more than 200 stars in 28 populous LMC clusters. This cluster sample spans a large range of ages (~ 1-13 Gyr) and metallicities (-0.3 > [Fe/H] > -2.0) and has good areal coverage of the LMC disk. The strong absorption lines of the Calcium II triplet are used to derive cluster radial velocities and abundances. We determine mean cluster velocities to typically 1.6 km/s and mean metallicities to 0.04 dex (random error). For eight of these clusters, we report the first spectroscopically determined metallicities based on individual cluster stars, and six of these eight have no published radial velocity measurements. (continued in paper