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The varying mass distribution of molecular clouds across M83

Freeman, P, Rosolowsky, E, Kruijssen, JMD, Bastian, N and Adamo, A (2017) The varying mass distribution of molecular clouds across M83. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 468 (2). pp. 1769-1781. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

The work of Adamo et al. showed that the mass distributions of young massive stellar clusters were truncated above a maximum-mass scale in the nearby galaxy M83 and that this truncation mass varies with the galactocentric radius. Here, we present a cloud-based analysis of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array CO(1 → 0) observations of M83 to search for such a truncation mass in the molecular cloud population. We identify a population of 873 molecular clouds in M83 that is largely similar to those found in the Milky Way and Local Group galaxies, though clouds in the centre of the galaxy show high surface densities and enhanced turbulence, as is common for clouds in high-density nuclear environments. Like the young massive clusters, we find a maximum-mass scale for the molecular clouds which decreases radially in the galaxy. We find that the most young massive cluster tracks the most massive molecular cloud with the cluster mass being 10−2 times that of the most massive molecular cloud. Outside the nuclear region of M83 (Rg > 0.5 kpc), 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. This result is consistent with the bound cluster formation efficiency depending only on the large-scale properties of the interstellar medium rather than the internal conditions of individual clouds.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2017 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords: 0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions: Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Related URLs:
Date Deposited: 18 Aug 2017 10:48
Last Modified: 21 Mar 2022 13:50
DOI or ID number: 10.1093/mnras/stx499
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/6950
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