The discovery of a z = 0.7092 oh megamaser with the mightee survey
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Date
2024
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Oxford University Press
Abstract
We present the discovery of the most distant OH megamaser (OHM) to be observed in the main lines, using data from the MeerKAT International Giga-Hertz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) survey. At a newly measured redshift of z = 0.7092, the system has strong emission in both the 1665 MHz (L ≈ 2500 L-) and 1667 MHz (L ≈ 4.5 × 104 L-) transitions, with both narrow and broad components. We interpret the broad line as a high-velocity-dispersion component of the 1667 MHz transition, with velocity v ∼330 km s-1 with respect to the systemic velocity. The host galaxy has a stellar mass of M = 2.95 × 1010 M- and a star formation rate of SFR = 371 M- yr-1, placing it ∼1.5 dex above the main sequence for star-forming galaxies at this redshift, and can be classified as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy. Alongside the optical imaging data, which exhibit evidence for a tidal tail, this suggests that the OHM arises from a system that is currently undergoing a merger, which is stimulating star formation and providing the necessary conditions for pumping the OH molecule to saturation
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Keywords
galaxies: ISM, galaxies: starburst, ISM: molecules, masers
Citation
Jarvis, M.J., Heywood, I., Jewell, S.M., Deane, R.P., Klöckner, H.R., Ponomareva, A.A., Maddox, N., Baker, A.J., Bianchetti, A., Hess, K.M. and Roberts, H., 2024. The discovery of az= 0.7092 OH megamaser with the MIGHTEE survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 529(4), pp.3484-3494.