The Second Survey of the Molecular Clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud
  by NANTEN. II. Star Formation
  We studied star formation activities in the molecular clouds in the Large
Magellanic Cloud. We have utilized the second catalog of 272 molecular clouds
obtained by NANTEN to compare the cloud distribution with signatures of massive
star formation including stellar clusters, and optical and radio HII regions.
We find that the molecular clouds are classified into three types according to
the activities of massive star formation; Type I shows no signature of massive
star formation, Type II is associated with relatively small HII region(s) and
Type III with both HII region(s) and young stellar cluster(s). The radio
continuum sources were used to confirm that Type I GMCs do not host optically
hidden HII regions. These signatures of massive star formation show a good
spatial correlation with the molecular clouds in a sense they are located
within ~100 pc of the molecular clouds. Among possible ideas to explain the GMC
Types, we favor that the Types indicate an evolutionary sequence; i.e., the
youngest phase is Type I, followed by Type II and the last phase is Type III,
where the most active star formation takes place leading to cloud dispersal.
The number of the three types of GMCs should be proportional to the time scale
of each evolutionary stage if a steady state of massive star and cluster
formation is a good approximation. By adopting the time scale of the youngest
stellar clusters, 10 Myrs, we roughly estimate the timescales of Types I, II
and III to be 6 Myrs, 13 Myrs and 7 Myrs, respectively, corresponding to a
lifetime of 20-30 Myrs for the GMCs with a mass above the completeness limit, 5
x 10^4 Msun.
