  Recently, a noticeable number of new star clusters was identified in the
outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) populating the so-called star
cluster age gap, a space of time (~ 4-12 Gyr) where the only known star cluster
is up-to-date ESO121-SC\,03. We used Survey of the Magellanic Stellar History
(SMASH) DR2 data sets, as well as those employed to identify these star cluster
candidates, to produce relatively deep color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of 17
out of 20 discovered age gap star clusters with the aim of investigating them
in detail. Our analysis relies on a thorough CMD cleaning procedure of the
field star contamination, which presents variations in its stellar density and
astrophysical properties, such as luminosity and effective temperature, around
the star cluster fields. We built star cluster CMDs from stars with membership
probabilities assigned from the cleaning procedure. These CMDs and their
respective spatial distribution maps favor the existence of LMC star field
density fluctuations rather than age gap star clusters, although a definitive
assessment on them will be possible from further deeper photometry.

Astrophysics of Galaxies