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 fit by a lognormal distribution , while that in high-mass star-forming regions is better fit by a double power law .
A single power law clump mass distribution is ruled out in all cases .
Fitting all of the regions with a double power law , we find the mean power law exponent at the high-mass end of each mass function is \alpha _ { high } = -2.4 \pm 0.1 , consistent with the Salpeter result of \alpha = -2.35 .
We find no region-to-region trend in \alpha _ { high } with the mass scale of the clumps in a given region , as characterized by their median mass .
Similarly , non non-parametric tests show that the shape of the clump mass function does not change much from region to region , despite the obvious changes in the intrinsic mass scale .
This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the clump mass distribution is determined by a highly stochastic process , such as turbulent fragmentation .
It may also suggest that the data reduction and analysis techniques strongly affect the shape of the derived mass function .