---
author:
- 'Esteban F. E. Morales'
- Friedrich Wyrowski
- Frederic Schuller
- 'Karl M. Menten'
bibliography:
- 'references.bib'
date: 'Received 3 April 2013 / Accepted 16 September 2013'
title: 'Stellar clusters in the inner Galaxy and their correlation with cold dust emission[^1]'
---

[Stars are born within dense clumps of giant molecular clouds, constituting young stellar agglomerates known as embedded clusters, which only evolve into bound open clusters under special conditions.]{} [We statistically study all embedded clusters (ECs) and open clusters (OCs) known so far in the inner Galaxy, investigating particularly their interaction with the surrounding molecular environment and the differences in their evolution.]{} [We first compiled a merged list of 3904 clusters from optical and infrared clusters catalogs in the literature, including 75 new (mostly embedded) clusters discovered by us in the GLIMPSE survey. From this list, 695 clusters are within the Galactic range $|\ell| \le 60\degr$ and $|b| \le 1.5\degr$ covered by the ATLASGAL survey, which was used to search for correlations with submm dust continuum emission tracing dense molecular gas. We defined an evolutionary sequence of five morphological types: deeply embedded cluster (EC1), partially embedded cluster (EC2), emerging open cluster (OC0), OC still associated with 