YOUNG STARS BETWEEN THE MAGELLANIC CLOUDS .3. OVERALL PROPERTIES OF ASSOCIATIONS - A SHALLOW MASS FUNCTION

We present CCD B, V photometry of three more groups of blue stars located in the bridge of the Magellanic Clouds (MC). Two associations near the SMC Wing tip are members of large complexes of blue stars. The other one, located at equal angular distance between the SMC and the LMC, is isolated. ZAMS fittings yield distances to the Sun that are intermediate between the ones of the LMC and the SMC. We find that the stellar bridge has a large line-of-sight depth near the eastern tip of the SMC Wing. A difference in distance modulus of 12 +/- 8 kpc is observed for two associations separated by only 17 arcmin. Isochrone fittings revealed that the inter-Cloud associations are as young as 16 million years. The global mass function of the associations is much flatter than the one obtained by Mateo [ApJ, 331, 261 (1988)] for MC's clusters. These associations are characterized by an IMF slope x 1.3 +/- 0.1 [xi(M) is-proportional-to (M)-(1 + x)] for masses in the 1.5-12 M. range. We also confirm that there is no halo population in the Magellanic Bridge, eastwards of the SMC Wing tip; the halos of the Magellanic Clouds do not touch each other.