_version_ 1866908854456942592
author Wallace, Jennifer
Kolz, Taevis
Battersby, Cara
Kuznetsova, Aleksandra
Sánchez-Monge, Álvaro
Schisano, Eugenio
Coletta, Alessandro
Zhang, Qizhou
Molinari, Sergio
Schilke, Peter
Ho, Paul T. P.
Kuiper, Rolf
Zhang, Tianwei
Möller, Thomas
Klessen, Ralf S.
Beltrán, Maria T.
van der Tak, Floris
Pezzuto, Stefania
Beuther, Henrik
Traficante, Alessio
Elia, Davide
Bronfman, Leonardo
Klaassen, Pamela
Lis, Dariusz C.
Moscadelli, Luca
Rygl, Kazi
Benedettini, Milena
Law, Chi Yan
Allande, Jofre
Nucara, Alice
Koch, Patrick M.
Kim, Won-ju
Sanhueza, Patricio
Fuller, Gary
Stroud, Georgie
Jones, Beth
Brogan, Crystal
Hunter, Todd
Ahmadi, Aida
Avison, Adam
Johnston, Katharine
Liu, Sheng-Yuan
Mininni, Chiara
Su, Yu-Nung
Zinnecker, Hans
author_facet Wallace, Jennifer
Kolz, Taevis
Battersby, Cara
Kuznetsova, Aleksandra
Sánchez-Monge, Álvaro
Schisano, Eugenio
Coletta, Alessandro
Zhang, Qizhou
Molinari, Sergio
Schilke, Peter
Ho, Paul T. P.
Kuiper, Rolf
Zhang, Tianwei
Möller, Thomas
Klessen, Ralf S.
Beltrán, Maria T.
van der Tak, Floris
Pezzuto, Stefania
Beuther, Henrik
Traficante, Alessio
Elia, Davide
Bronfman, Leonardo
Klaassen, Pamela
Lis, Dariusz C.
Moscadelli, Luca
Rygl, Kazi
Benedettini, Milena
Law, Chi Yan
Allande, Jofre
Nucara, Alice
Koch, Patrick M.
Kim, Won-ju
Sanhueza, Patricio
Fuller, Gary
Stroud, Georgie
Jones, Beth
Brogan, Crystal
Hunter, Todd
Ahmadi, Aida
Avison, Adam
Johnston, Katharine
Liu, Sheng-Yuan
Mininni, Chiara
Su, Yu-Nung
Zinnecker, Hans
contents Investigating the multi-scale fragmentation of dense clumps into compact cores is essential for understanding the processes that govern the initial distribution of mass in stellar clusters and how high-mass stars ($>8~M_{\odot}$) form. We present a catalog of the hierarchical continuum structure from 904 clumps observed in the ALMAGAL program, a high resolution ($0.15-0.8$\arcsec) 1.38 mm Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) large program targeting dense clumps capable of high-mass star formation throughout the Galactic disk. We use \verb|astrodendro|, a dendrogram-based algorithm, on a uniform linear resolution (2000 au) version of the data to extract 5160 continuum structures with effective radii spanning $800-42000$ au and estimated masses between $~0.05-670~M_{\odot}$. With our large sample, we statistically examine differences in clump properties for regions with varying levels of hierarchical complexity. We find that clumps exhibiting the richest hierarchical morphology have distributions with higher dust temperatures, surface densities, luminosity-to-mass (\textit{L/M}) ratios, and most massive core (MMC) masses, indicating that these regions tend to be at later evolutionary stages. We find a positive correlation between the mass of cores from the ALMAGAL core catalog and the surface density of their surrounding structures identified in this work. However, this correlation is weaker for cores in more evolved clumps, where lower mass cores can be found at higher local surface densities. This could indicate that some cores accrete mass less efficiently from the intra-clump reservoir than others, despite the total available mass increasing over time, a scenario that is congruent with a clump-fed core accretion model.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_12892
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ALMAGAL VII. Cataloging Hierarchical Mass Structure from Cores to Clumps across the Galactic Disk
Wallace, Jennifer
Kolz, Taevis
Battersby, Cara
Kuznetsova, Aleksandra
Sánchez-Monge, Álvaro
Schisano, Eugenio
Coletta, Alessandro
Zhang, Qizhou
Molinari, Sergio
Schilke, Peter
Ho, Paul T. P.
Kuiper, Rolf
Zhang, Tianwei
Möller, Thomas
Klessen, Ralf S.
Beltrán, Maria T.
van der Tak, Floris
Pezzuto, Stefania
Beuther, Henrik
Traficante, Alessio
Elia, Davide
Bronfman, Leonardo
Klaassen, Pamela
Lis, Dariusz C.
Moscadelli, Luca
Rygl, Kazi
Benedettini, Milena
Law, Chi Yan
Allande, Jofre
Nucara, Alice
Koch, Patrick M.
Kim, Won-ju
Sanhueza, Patricio
Fuller, Gary
Stroud, Georgie
Jones, Beth
Brogan, Crystal
Hunter, Todd
Ahmadi, Aida
Avison, Adam
Johnston, Katharine
Liu, Sheng-Yuan
Mininni, Chiara
Su, Yu-Nung
Zinnecker, Hans
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Investigating the multi-scale fragmentation of dense clumps into compact cores is essential for understanding the processes that govern the initial distribution of mass in stellar clusters and how high-mass stars ($>8~M_{\odot}$) form. We present a catalog of the hierarchical continuum structure from 904 clumps observed in the ALMAGAL program, a high resolution ($0.15-0.8$\arcsec) 1.38 mm Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) large program targeting dense clumps capable of high-mass star formation throughout the Galactic disk. We use \verb|astrodendro|, a dendrogram-based algorithm, on a uniform linear resolution (2000 au) version of the data to extract 5160 continuum structures with effective radii spanning $800-42000$ au and estimated masses between $~0.05-670~M_{\odot}$. With our large sample, we statistically examine differences in clump properties for regions with varying levels of hierarchical complexity. We find that clumps exhibiting the richest hierarchical morphology have distributions with higher dust temperatures, surface densities, luminosity-to-mass (\textit{L/M}) ratios, and most massive core (MMC) masses, indicating that these regions tend to be at later evolutionary stages. We find a positive correlation between the mass of cores from the ALMAGAL core catalog and the surface density of their surrounding structures identified in this work. However, this correlation is weaker for cores in more evolved clumps, where lower mass cores can be found at higher local surface densities. This could indicate that some cores accrete mass less efficiently from the intra-clump reservoir than others, despite the total available mass increasing over time, a scenario that is congruent with a clump-fed core accretion model.
title ALMAGAL VII. Cataloging Hierarchical Mass Structure from Cores to Clumps across the Galactic Disk
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12892