The Star Formation Histories, Star Formation Efficiencies and Ionizing Sources of ATLASGAL Clumps with H ii Regions

Abstract

1226 ATLASGAL clumps with H ii regions (H ii-clumps) were matched with radio sources in the CORNISH-North/South surveys, and 392 of them have corresponding radio sources. We determined the stellar luminosity L *,T84 according to the Lyman continuum flux N Ly. When the bolometric luminosity of H ii-clumps is less than log10(L bol,obs/L ⊙) ≈3.7, corresponding to a clump mass log10(M cl/M ⊙) ≈ 2.55, the values of L *,T84 derived from N Ly overestimate the actual stellar luminosities, because the accretion onto the protostars contributes significantly to the radio emission. After subtracting the accretion luminosity from L *,T84, we obtained reasonable estimates of the stellar luminosity. Using the 0.5 Myr isochrone, we calculated the stellar masses according to the stellar luminosities, and found that they roughly follow the m max − M ecl relation of embedded clusters, consistent with the ionizing sources representing the most massive stars in the embedded clusters of H ii-clumps. We also studied the contribution of the possible flaring activity to the observed stellar luminosity and found that they can be neglected. We further studied the change of SFE with the clump mass. According to the derived mass of the most massive star in each HII-clump, using the theoretical m max − M ecl relation, we calculated the mass of the corresponding embedded cluster and then the SFE of the clump. The SFE decreases with increasing clump mass, with a median value of ≈0.3. We also independently derived the SFE for each H ii-clump based on the model developed in our previous work. The SFEs of H ii-clumps derived from the observation and the model are in good agreement. Concerning the star formation histories of the ATLASGAL clumps, low-mass clumps may reach the peak of star formation earlier than high-mass clumps, consistent with the shorter free-fall time of low-mass clumps.