Context : Detailed studies of intermediate/low mass pre-main sequence ( PMS ) stars outside the Galaxy have so far been conducted only for small targeted regions harbouring known star formation complexes .
The VISTA Survey of the Magellanic Clouds ( VMC ) provides an opportunity to study PMS populations down to solar masses on a galaxy-wide scale .

Aims : Our goal is to use near-infrared data from the VMC survey to identify and characterise PMS populations down to \sim 1 \mathrm { M _ { \sun } } across the Magellanic Clouds .
We present our colour - magnitude diagram method , and apply it to a \sim 1.5 \textrm { deg } ^ { 2 } pilot field located in the Large Magellanic Cloud .

Methods : The pilot field is divided into equally-sized grid elements .
We compare the stellar population in every element with the population in nearby control fields by creating K _ { s } / ( Y - K _ { s } ) Hess diagrams ; the observed density excesses over the local field population are used to classify the stellar populations .

Results : Our analysis recovers all known star formation complexes in this pilot field ( N 44 , N 51 , N 148 and N 138 ) and for the first time reveals their true spatial extent .
In total , around 2260 PMS candidates with ages \lesssim 10 Myr are found in the pilot field .
PMS structures , identified as areas with a significant density excess of PMS candidates , display a power-law distribution of the number of members with a slope of -0.86 \pm 0.12 .
We find a clustering of the young stellar populations along ridges and filaments where dust emission in the far-infrared ( FIR ) ( 70 \mathrm { \mu m } – 500 \mathrm { \mu m } ) is bright .
Regions with young populations lacking massive stars show a lesser degree of clustering and are usually located in the outskirts of the star formation complexes .
At short FIR wavelengths ( 70 \mathrm { \mu m } , 100 \mathrm { \mu m } ) we report a strong dust emission increase in regions hosting young massive stars , which is less pronounced in regions populated only by less massive ( \lesssim 4 \mathrm { M _ { \sun } } ) PMS stars .

Conclusions :