ATLASGAL --- towards a complete sample of massive star forming clumps

TL;DR

This study compiles a comprehensive catalog of approximately 1700 massive stars embedded in about 1300 clumps across the inner Galaxy, revealing correlations between star formation, clump structure, and mass, and suggesting evolutionary stages of massive star formation.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale, multi-tracer catalog of massive star-forming clumps, analyzing their structure, mass, and evolutionary stages across the Galaxy.

Findings

Massive star formation correlates with high column density regions.

Clump structure remains consistent before and during star formation.

Clump mass strongly correlates with bolometric luminosity.

Abstract

By matching infrared-selected, massive young stellar objects (MYSOs) and compact HII regions in the RMS survey to massive clumps found in the submillimetre ATLASGAL survey, we have identified ~1000 embedded young massive stars between 280\degr < $\ell$ < 350\degr and 10degr < $\ell$ < 60\degr with |b|<1.5degr. Combined with an existing sample of radio-selected methanol masers and compact HII regions, the result is a catalogue of ~1700 massive stars embedded within ~1300 clumps located across the inner Galaxy, containing three observationally distinct subsamples, methanol-maser, MYSO and HII-region associations, covering the most important tracers of massive star formation, thought to represent key stages of evolution. We find that massive star formation is strongly correlated with the regions of highest column density in spherical, centrally condensed clumps. We find no significant differences between the three samples in clump structure or the relative location of the embedded stars, which suggests that the structure of a clump is set before the onset of star formation, and changes little as the embedded object evolves towards the main sequence. There is a strong linear correlation between clump mass and bolometric luminosity, with the most massive stars forming in the most massive clumps. We find that the MYSO and HII-region subsamples are likely to cover a similar range of evolutionary stages and that the majority are near the end of their main accretion phase. We find few infrared-bright MYSOs associated with the most massive clumps, probably due to very short pre-main sequence lifetimes in the most luminous sources.