The global chemical properties of high-mass star forming clumps at different evolutionary stages

Abstract

A total of 197 relatively isolated high-mass star-forming clumps were selected from the Millimeter Astronomy Legacy Team 90 GHz (MALT90) survey data and their global chemical evolution investigated using four molecular lines, \(\mbox{N}_{2}\mbox{H}^{+}\ \mbox{(1--0)}\), \(\mbox{HCO}^{+}\ \mbox{(1--0)}\), HCN (1–0), and HNC (1–0). The results suggest that the global averaged integrated intensity ratios \(I(\mbox{HCO}^{+})/I(\mbox{HNC})\), \(I(\mbox{HCN})/I(\mbox{HNC})\), \(I(\mbox{N}_{2}\mbox{H}^{+})\mbox{/}I(\mbox{HCO}^{+})\), and \(I(\mbox{N}_{2}\mbox{H}^{+})\mbox{/} I(\mbox{HCN})\) are promising tracers for evolution of high-mass star-forming clumps. The global averaged column densities and abundances of \(\mbox{N}_{2}\mbox{H}^{+}\), \(\mbox{HCO}^{+}\), \(\mbox{HCN}\), and \(\mbox{HNC}\) increase as clumps evolve. The global averaged abundance ratios \(X(\mbox{HCN})\mbox{/}X(\mbox{HNC})\) could be used to trace evolution of high-mass star forming clumps, \(X(\mbox{HCO}^{+})\mbox{/}X(\mbox{HNC})\) is more suitable for distinguishing high-mass star-forming clumps in prestellar (stage A) from those in protostellar (stage B) and HII/PDR region (stage C). These results suggest that the global averaged integrated intensity ratios between HCN (1–0), HNC (1–0), \(\mbox{HCO}^{+}\ \mbox{(1--0)}\) and \(\mbox{N}_{2}\mbox{H}^{+}\ \mbox{(1--0)}\) are more suitable for tracing the evolution of high-mass star forming clumps. We also studied the chemical properties of the target high-mass star-forming clumps in each spiral arm of the Galaxy, and got results very different from those above. This is probably due to the relatively small sample in each spiral arm. For high-mass star-forming clumps in Sagittarius arm and Norma-Outer arm, comparing two groups located on one arm with different Galactocentric distances, the clumps near the Galactic Center appear to be younger than those far from the Galactic center, which may be due to more dense gas concentrated near the Galactic Center, and hence more massive stars being formed there.