The Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC ) harbors a rich and diverse system of star clusters , whose ages , chemical abundances , and positions provide information about the LMC history of star formation .
We use Science Verification imaging data from the Dark Energy Survey to increase the census of known star clusters in the outer LMC and to derive physical parameters for a large sample of such objects using a spatially and photometrically homogeneous data set .
Our sample contains 255 visually identified cluster candidates , of which 109 were not listed in any previous catalog .
We quantify the crowding effect for the stellar sample produced by the DES Data Management pipeline and conclude that the stellar completeness is < 10 % inside typical LMC cluster cores .
We therefore develop a pipeline to sample and measure stellar magnitudes and positions around the cluster candidates using daophot .
We also implement a maximum-likelihood method to fit individual density profiles and colour-magnitude diagrams .
For 117 ( from a total of 255 ) of the cluster candidates ( 28 uncatalogued clusters ) , we obtain reliable ages , metallicities , distance moduli and structural parameters , confirming their nature as physical systems .
The distribution of cluster metallicities shows a radial dependence , with no clusters more metal-rich than [ Fe / H ] \simeq - 0.7 beyond 8 kpc from the LMC center .
The age distribution has two peaks at \simeq 1.2 Gyr and \simeq 2.7 Gyr .