Population I Cepheids and understanding star formation history of the
  Small Magellanic Cloud
  In this paper, we study the age and spatial distributions of Cepheids in the
Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) as a function of their ages using the data from
the OGLE III photometric catalogue. A period-age (PA) relation derived for the
Classical Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has been used to find
the ages of Cepheids. The age distribution of the SMC Classical Cepheids is
found to have a peak at log(Age) = 8.40+/-0.10 which suggests that a major star
formation event might have occurred in the SMC at about 250+/-50 Myrs ago. It
is believed that this star forming burst had been triggered by close
interactions of the SMC with the LMC and/or the Milky Way (MW). A comparison of
the observed spatial distributions of the Cepheids and open star clusters has
also been carried out to study the star formation scenario in the SMC.
