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OH megamasers as extragalactic diagnostics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2007

Ylva M. Pihlström
Ylva M. Pihlström*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, 800 Yale Blvd. NE, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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Luminous, extragalactic OH masers are excellent tracers of merger triggered, intense star formation in Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs). As such, they are tracers of high density regions in the centers of active galaxies. From high resolution imaging of the 1667 MHz emission in a small sample of OH megamaser galaxies, the general consensus is that most of the maser emission arises in thick, circumnuclear structures. Here we summarize the current work on OH megamasers, and present the preliminary results on VLA observations of the 1720 MHz satellite line in III Zw 35, Mrk 231 and Arp 220. We also briefly mention ongoing work on investigating the nature of the high molecular gas density environment in a sample of ULIRGs, using CO (J=3–2) observations. A subset of the ULIRG sample harbors OH megamaser emission, and is therefore suited for comparing gas properties between ULIRGs with and without OH megamaser emission.

Keywords

masersgalaxies:starburstradio lines: galaxiesinstrumentation: high angular resolution
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 3 , Symposium S242: Astrophysical Masers and their Environments , March 2007 , pp. 446 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2008

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