High-mass Starless Clumps in the Inner Galactic Plane: The Sample and Dust Properties

Abstract

We report a sample of 463 high-mass starless clump (HMSC) candidates within and . This sample has been singled out from 10,861 ATLASGAL clumps. None of these sources are associated with any known star-forming activities collected in SIMBAD and young stellar objects identified using color-based criteria. We also make sure that the HMSC candidates have neither point sources at 24 and 70 μ m nor strong extended emission at 24 μ m. Most of the identified HMSCs are infrared dark, and some are even dark at 70 μ m. Their distribution shows crowding in Galactic spiral arms and toward the Galactic center and some well-known star-forming complexes. Many HMSCs are associated with large-scale filaments. Some basic parameters were attained from column density and dust temperature maps constructed via fitting far-infrared and submillimeter continuum data to modified blackbodies. The HMSC candidates have sizes, masses, and densities similar to clumps associated with Class II methanol masers and H  ii  regions, suggesting that they will evolve into star-forming clumps. More than 90% of the HMSC candidates have densities above some proposed thresholds for forming high-mass stars. With dust temperatures and luminosity-to-mass ratios significantly lower than that for star-forming sources, the HMSC candidates are externally heated and genuinely at very early stages of high-mass star formation. Twenty sources with equivalent radii pc and mass surface densities g cm −2 could be possible high-mass starless cores. Further investigations toward these HMSCs would undoubtedly shed light on comprehensively understanding the birth of high-mass stars.