The Araucaria Project. The Distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud from
  Near-Infrared Photometry of RR Lyrae Variables
  We have obtained deep infrared J and K band observations of nine 4.9x4.9
arcmin fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) with the ESO New Technology
Telescope equipped with the SOFI infrared camera. In these fields, 34 RR Lyrae
stars catalogued by the OGLE collaboration were identified. Using different
theoretical and empirical calibrations of the infrared
period-luminosity-metallicity relation, we find consistent SMC distance moduli,
and find a best true distance modulus to the SMC of 18.97 +/- 0.03
(statistical) +/- 0.12 (systematic) mag which agrees well with most independent
distance determinations to this galaxy, and puts the SMC 0.39 mag more distant
than the LMC for which our group has recently derived, from the same technique,
a distance of 18.58 mag.
