This paper presents the chemical abundance analysis of a sample of 27 red giant stars located in 4 popolous intermediate-age globular clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud , namely NGC 1651 , 1783 , 1978 and 2173 .
This analysis is based on high-resolution ( R \sim 47000 ) spectra obtained with the UVES @ VLT spectrograph .
For each cluster we derived up to 20 abundance ratios sampling the main chemical elemental groups , namely light odd-Z , \alpha , iron-peak and neutron-capture elements . All the analysed abundance patterns behave similarly in the 4 clusters and also show negligible star-to-star scatter within each cluster .
We find [ Fe/H ] =-0.30 \pm 0.03 , -0.35 \pm 0.02 , -0.38 \pm 0.02 and -0.51 \pm 0.03 dex for NGC 1651 , 1783 , 1978 and 2173 , respectively . The measurement of light odd-Z nuclei gives slightly subsolar [ Na/Fe ] and a more significant [ Al/Fe ] depletion ( \sim -0.50 dex ) .
The [ \alpha /Fe ] abundance ratios are nearly solar , while the iron-peak elements well trace that one of the iron . s-process elements behave in a peculiar way : light s-elements give subsolar [ Y/Fe ] and [ Zr/Fe ] abundance ratios , while heavy s-elements give enhanced [ Ba/Fe ] , [ La/Fe ] and [ Nd/Fe ] with respect to the solar values .
Also , the [ Eu/Fe ] abundance ratio turns out to be enhanced ( \sim 0.4 dex ) .