ABSTRACT The work of identified characteristic mass scales in the mass distributions of young massive clusters in the nearby galaxy M83. Here, here we present a cloud-based analysis of ALMA CO(1 → 0) data to search for such characteristic mass scales in the molecular cloud population. We identify a population of molecular clouds in M83 that is largely similar to those found in the Milky Way and Local Group galaxies, however clouds in the center of the galaxy show high surface densities and enhanced turbulence, as is common for clouds in high density nuclear environments. Like the work on young massive clusters, we find a characteristic mass scale for the populations that decreases radially in the galaxy. We find the most massive young massive cluster tracks the most massive molecular cloud radially with the cluster mass being ∼0.01 that of the most massive molecular cloud. The maximum mass of the molecular cloud distribution also corresponds well to the value expected from shear instabilities, particularly in regions outside the nuclear and bar regions, where our simple shear model is inappropriate. Outside the nuclear region of M83 (Rgal > 0.5), there is no evidence for changing internal conditions in the population of molecular clouds, with the average internal pressures, densities, and free-fall times remaining constant for the cloud population over the galaxy. Thus, the observed variation in the fraction of star formation that results in bound clusters must result from the changing fragmentation process of the molecular gas.
