  As a part of an ongoing effort to characterise the young stellar populations
in the Large Magellanic Cloud, we present HST-WFPC2 broad and narrow band
imaging of two fields with recent star formation activity in the Tarantula
region. A population of objects with Halpha and/or Balmer continuum excess was
identified. On account of the intense Halpha emission (equivalent widths up to
several tens of Angstroms), its correlation with the Balmer continuum excess
and the stars' location on the HR diagram, we interpret them as low mass (~1-2
Mo) Pre-Main Sequence stars. In this framework, the data show that coeval high
and low mass stars have significantly different spatial distributions, implying
that star formation processes for different ranges of stellar masses are rather
different and/or require different initial conditions. We find that the overall
slope of the mass function of the young population is somewhat steeper than the
classical Salpeter value and that the star formation density of this young
component is 0.2-0.4 Mo/yr/kpc2, i.e. intermediate between the value for an
active spiral disk and that of a starburst region. The uncertainties associated
with the determination of the slope of the mass function and the star formation
density are thoroughly discussed.
