Titolo della tesi: Investigating massive star formation with ALMAGAL: fragmentation of dense clumps, compact source catalog and physical analysis of the core population
The physical mechanisms behind high-mass star formation, and in particular the
fragmentation of massive dense clumps into compact star-forming cores (and their
properties) are fundamental topics heavily investigated in current astrophysical
research. The ALMAGAL survey provides the opportunity to study these processes
with an unprecedented level of statistical and physical significance and detail, fea-
turing high-resolution 1.4 mm ALMA observations of 1000+ massive dense clumps
at various Galactic locations, which cover a wide range of distances (∼ 2 − 8 kpc),
masses (10^2 − 10^4 M⊙), surface densities (0.1 − 10 g cm^−2), and evolutionary stages
(∼ 0.05 < L/M < 500 L⊙/M⊙), achieving a uniformly high spatial resolution of
≲ 1000 AU, able to access the typical core scales. This PhD thesis constitutes
the first scientific exploitation and analysis of the ALMAGAL data, and aims to
investigate the clump fragmentation process by statistically and physically char-
acterizing its outcome, in order to get indications on mechanisms and evolution
of the massive star formation process and formulate a likely coherent scenario. In
detail, I performed the processing and imaging of the ALMA observational data to
obtain the dust continuum images for the full ALMAGAL clump sample. After an
extensive work of testing and tuning, I applied an optimized source detection and
photometry procedure, employing an implemented version of the CuTEx algorithm,
on the continuum maps to extract the catalog of ALMAGAL compact sources (cores).
The catalog includes 6303 cores detected in 838 clumps (83% of the total), with a
number of detections per clump between 1 and 49 (median of 5). I characterized the
photometric properties of the detected compact sources and estimated their main
physical parameters, finding core sizes within ∼ 1000 − 3000 AU (median of 1700
AU), and masses from ∼ 0.01 to ∼ 300 M⊙, with the two parameters showing a good
correlation and a power-law relation M ∝ R^2.6. I analyzed the shape of the observed
Core Mass Function (CMF) by fitting a power law to the high-mass tail, finding that
only for masses ≥ 3 M⊙ the shape of the distribution is well reproduced by a power
law (with slopes slightly steeper than Salpeter’s −1.35). I evaluated the variation of
the CMF as a function of evolution, as traced by the clump evolutionary indicator
L/M , finding a clear shift among CMFs within subsamples at different stages, with
more massive cores appearing at later stages, thus suggesting that the CMF shape is
not constant throughout the star formation process but rather builds with evolution.
I analyzed the relations among the revealed fragmentation properties, the physical
parameters of the cores, and the properties of the hosting clumps (also comparing
with results from numerical simulations), finding that both the core masses and the
number of detections increase on average with evolution and the surface density
of the clump, which leads to an increasing Core Formation Efficiency (CFE). A
population of low-mass cores at nearly constant mass of ∼ 0.2 M⊙ is nonetheless
revealed at all stages, possibly corresponding to newly formed fragments. Overall,
our results suggest a likely gravity-driven clump-fed scenario for high-mass star
formation, with cores gradually accreting mass from the intraclump medium in a
competitive way in the context of a dynamical, multi-scale framework, while clump
fragmentation proceeds in parallel throughout evolution.