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Description
We report a sample of 463 high-mass starless clump (HMSC) candidates within -60{deg}<l<60{deg} and -1{deg}<b<1{deg}. This sample has been singled out from 10861 ATLASGAL clumps. None of these sources are associated with any known star-forming activities collected in SIMBAD and young stellar objects identified using color-based criteria. We also make sure that the HMSC candidates have neither point sources at 24 and 70{mu}m nor strong extended emission at 24{mu}m. Most of the identified HMSCs are infrared dark, and some are even dark at 70{mu}m. Their distribution shows crowding in Galactic spiral arms and toward the Galactic center and some well-known star-forming complexes. Many HMSCs are associated with large-scale filaments. Some basic parameters were attained from column density and dust temperature maps constructed via fitting far-infrared and submillimeter continuum data to modified blackbodies. The HMSC candidates have sizes, masses, and densities similar to clumps associated with Class II methanol masers and H II regions, suggesting that they will evolve into star-forming clumps. More than 90% of the HMSC candidates have densities above some proposed thresholds for forming high-mass stars. With dust temperatures and luminosity-to-mass ratios significantly lower than that for star-forming sources, the HMSC candidates are externally heated and genuinely at very early stages of high-mass star formation. Twenty sources with equivalent radii r_eq_<0.15pc and mass surface densities {Sigma}>0.08g/cm^2^ could be possible high-mass starless cores. Further investigations toward these HMSCs would undoubtedly shed light on comprehensively understanding the birth of high-mass stars.
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