MAD about the Large Magellanic Cloud: preparing for the era of Extremely
  Large Telescopes
  We present J, H, Ks photometry from the the Multi conjugate Adaptive optics
Demonstrator (MAD), a visitor instrument at the VLT, of a resolved stellar
population in a small crowded field in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud
near the globular cluster NGC 1928. In a total exposure time of 6, 36 and 20
minutes, magnitude limits were achieved of J \sim 20.5 mag, H \sim 21 mag, and
Ks \sim20.5 mag respectively, with S/N> 10. This does not reach the level of
the oldest Main Sequence Turnoffs, however the resulting Colour-Magnitude
Diagrams are the deepest and most accurate obtained so far in the infrared for
the LMC bar. We combined our photometry with deep optical photometry from the
Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys, which is a good match in
spatial resolution. The comparison between synthetic and observed CMDs shows
that the stellar population of the field we observed is consistent with the
star formation history expected for the LMC bar, and that all combinations of
IJHKs filters can, with some care, produce the same results. We used the Red
Clump magnitude in Ks to confirm the LMC distance modulus as,
{\mu}0=18.50\pm0.06r \pm0.09s mag. We also addressed a number of technical
aspects related to performing accurate photometry with adaptive optics images
in crowded stellar fields, which has implications for how we should design and
use the Extremely Large Telescopes of the future for studies of this kind.
