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Description
We study the star-formation (SF) law in 12 Galactic molecular clouds with ongoing high-mass star-formation (HMSF) activity, as traced by the presence of a bright IRAS source and other HMSF tracers. We define the molecular cloud (MC) associated with each IRAS source using ^13^CO line emission, and count the young stellar objects (YSOs) within these clouds using GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL 24{mu}m Spitzer databases. The masses for high-luminosity YSOs (L_bol_>10L_{sun}_) are determined individually using pre-main-sequence evolutionary tracks and the evolutionary stages of the sources, whereas a mean mass of 0.5M_{sun}_ was adopted to determine the masses in the low-luminosity YSO population. The star-formation rate surface density ({Sigma}SFR) corresponding to a gas surface density ({Sigma}gas) in each MC is obtained by counting the number of the YSOs within successive contours of ^13^CO line emission. We find a break in the relation between {Sigma}SFR and {Sigma}gas, with the relation being a power law ({Sigma}SFR{propto}{Sigma}gas^N^) with the index N varying between 1.4 and 3.6 above the break. The {Sigma}gas at the break is between 150-360M_{sun}_/pc^2^ for the sample clouds, which compares well with the threshold gas density found in recent studies of Galactic star-forming regions. Our clouds treated as a whole lie between the Kennicutt relation and the linear relation for Galactic and extra-galactic dense star-forming regions. We find a tendency for the high- mass YSOs to be found preferentially in dense regions at densities higher than 1200M_{sun}_/pc^2^ (~0.25g/cm^2^).
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