ATLASGAL-selected massive clumps in the inner Galaxy. X. Observations of
  atomic carbon at 492 GHz
  (Abridged) In this paper, we investigate the physical conditions of
[CI]-traced gas in high-mass star-forming regions by analyzing APEX [CI] 492
GHz single-pointing observations of the ATLASGAL Top100 sources along with
other multi-wavelength data. Our 98 sources are clearly detected in [CI] 492
GHz emission, and the observed integrated intensities and line widths tend to
increase toward evolved stages of star formation. In addition to these "main"
components that are associated with the Top100 sample, 41 emission and two
absorption features are identified by their velocities toward 28 and two lines
of sight respectively as "secondary" components. The secondary components have
systematically smaller integrated intensities and line widths than the main
components. We found that [CI] 492 GHz and 13CO(2-1) are well correlated with
the 13CO(2-1)-to-[CI] 492 GHz integrated intensity ratio varying from 0.2 to
5.3. In addition, we derived the H2-to-[CI] conversion factor, X(CI), by
dividing 870 micron-based H2 column densities by the observed [CI] 492 GHz
integrated intensities and found that X(CI) ranges from 2.3e20 to 1.3e22 with a
median of 1.7e21. In contrast to the strong correlation with 13CO(2-1), [CI]
492 GHz has a scattered relation with the 870 micron-traced molecular gas.
Finally, we performed LTE and non-LTE analyses of the [CI] 492 GHz and 809 GHz
data for a subset of the Top100 sample and inferred that [CI] emission likely
originates from warm (kinetic temperature > 60 K), optically thin (opacity <
0.5), and highly pressurized (thermal pressure ~ e5 to e8 K/cm3) regions.
