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Description
The formation processes of massive stars are still unclear but a picture is emerging involving accretion disks and molecular outflows in what appears to be a scaled-up version of lower-mass star formation. A census of outflow activity towards high-mass star-forming clumps in various evolutionary stages has the potential to shed light on high-mass star formation. We conduct an outflow survey toward ATLASGAL (APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy) clumps, using SEDIGISM (structure, Excitation, and Dynamics of the Inner Galactic InterStellar Medium) data and aim to obtain a large sample of clumps exhibiting outflow activity in different evolutionary stages. We identify the high-velocity wings of the ^13^CO lines, indicating outflow activity, toward ATLASGAL clumps by (1) extracting the simultaneously observed ^13^CO(2-1) and C^18^O(2-1) spectra from SEDIGISM, and (2) subtracting the scaled C^18^O (cores emission) from the ^13^CO, after considering opacity broadening. We have detected high-velocity gas towards 1192 clumps out of a total sample of 2052 corresponding to an overall detection rate of 58%. Outflow activity has been detected from the earliest (apparently) quiescent clumps (i.e., 70 microns weak), to the most evolved HII region stages (i.e., 8 micron bright with tracers of massive star formation). The detection rate increases as a function of evolution (quiescent = 51%, protostellar = 47%, YSO = 57%, UCHII regions = 76%). Our sample is the largest outflow sample identified so far. The high detection rate from this large sample is consistent with the results of similar studies reported in the literature and supports the scenario that outflows are a ubiquitous feature of high-mass star formation. The lower detection rate in early evolutionary stages could be due to the fact that outflows in the early stages are weak and difficult to detect. We obtain a statistically significant number of outflow clumps for every evolutionary stage, especially for outflow clumps in the earliest stages (i.e., 70 microns dark cloud or massive starless core).
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