Description
The TOPGot project targets a sample of 86 high-mass star-forming regions in different evolutionary stages from starless cores to ultra compact HII regions. The aim of the survey is to analyze different molecular species in a statistically significant sample to study the chemical evolution in high-mass star-forming regions, and identify chemical tracers of the different phases. In the first paper we present the sample and analyze the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of the TOPGot sources to derive physical parameters. We also use the MADCUBA software to analyze the emission of methyl cyanide (CH_3_CN), a well-known tracer of high-mass star formation. The emission of the CH_3_CN(5K-4K) K-transitions has been detected towards 73 sources (85% of the sample). The emission of CH_3_CN has been detected towards all evolutionary stages, with the mean abundances showing a clear increase of an order of magnitude from high-mass starless-cores to later evolutionary stages. We found a conservative abundance upper limit for high-mass starless cores of X_CH_3_CN_<4.0x10^-11^, and a range in abundance of 4.0x10^-11^<X_CH_3_CN_<7.0x10^-11^ for those sources that are likely high-mass starless cores or very early high-mass protostellar objects. In fact, in this range of abundance we have identified five sources previously not classified as being in a very early evolutionary stage. The abundance of CH_3_CN can thus be used to identify high-mass star-forming regions in early phases of star-formation.
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