High-Mass Star Formation. III. The Functional Form of the Submillimeter Clump Mass Function

We investigate the mass function of cold, dusty clumps in 11 low- and high-mass star-forming regions. Using a homogeneous fitting technique, we analyze the shape of each region's clump mass function and examine the commonalities among them. We find that the submillimeter continuum clump mass function in low-mass star-forming regions is typically best fitted by a lognormal distribution, while that in high-mass star-forming regions is better …