Looking at the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array: Discovery of a Luminous OH Megamaser at z > 0.5

Glowacki, Marcin and Collier, Jordan D. and Kazemi-Moridani, Amir and Frank, Bradley and Roberts, Hayley and Darling, Jeremy and Klöckner, Hans-Rainer and Adams, Nathan and Baker, Andrew J. and Bershady, Matthew and Blecher, Tariq and Blyth, Sarah-Louise and Bowler, Rebecca and Catinella, Barbara and Chemin, Laurent and Crawford, Steven M. and Cress, Catherine and Davé, Romeel and Deane, Roger and de Blok, Erwin and Delhaize, Jacinta and Duncan, Kenneth and Elson, Ed and February, Sean and Gawiser, Eric and Hatfield, Peter and Healy, Julia and Henning, Patricia and Hess, Kelley M. and Heywood, Ian and Holwerda, Benne W. and Hoosain, Munira and Hughes, John P. and Hutchens, Zackary L. and Jarvis, Matt and Kannappan, Sheila and Katz, Neal and Kereš, Dušan and Korsaga, Marie and Kraan-Korteweg, Renée C. and Lah, Philip and Lochner, Michelle and Maddox, Natasha and Makhathini, Sphesihle and Meurer, Gerhardt R. and Meyer, Martin and Obreschkow, Danail and Oh, Se-Heon and Oosterloo, Tom and Oppor, Joshua and Pan, Hengxing and Pisano, D. J. and Randriamiarinarivo, Nandrianina and Ravindranath, Swara and Schröder, Anja C. and Skelton, Rosalind and Smirnov, Oleg and Smith, Mathew and Somerville, Rachel S. and Srianand, Raghunathan and Staveley-Smith, Lister and Tanaka, Masayuki and Vaccari, Mattia and van Driel, Wim and Verheijen, Marc and Walter, Fabian and Wu, John F. and Zwaan, Martin A. (2022) Looking at the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array: Discovery of a Luminous OH Megamaser at z > 0.5. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 931 (1). L7. ISSN 2041-8205

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Abstract

In the local universe, OH megamasers (OHMs) are detected almost exclusively in infrared-luminous galaxies, with a prevalence that increases with IR luminosity, suggesting that they trace gas-rich galaxy mergers. Given the proximity of the rest frequencies of OH and the hyperfine transition of neutral atomic hydrogen (H i), radio surveys to probe the cosmic evolution of H i in galaxies also offer exciting prospects for exploiting OHMs to probe the cosmic history of gas-rich mergers. Using observations for the Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array (LADUMA) deep H i survey, we report the first untargeted detection of an OHM at z > 0.5, LADUMA J033046.20−275518.1 (nicknamed "Nkalakatha"). The host system, WISEA J033046.26−275518.3, is an infrared-luminous radio galaxy whose optical redshift z ≈ 0.52 confirms the MeerKAT emission-line detection as OH at a redshift zOH = 0.5225 ± 0.0001 rather than H i at lower redshift. The detected spectral line has 18.4σ peak significance, a width of 459 ± 59 km s−1, and an integrated luminosity of (6.31 ± 0.18 [statistical] ± 0.31 [systematic]) × 103 L⊙, placing it among the most luminous OHMs known. The galaxy's far-infrared luminosity LFIR = (1.576 ±0.013) × 1012 L⊙ marks it as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy; its ratio of OH and infrared luminosities is similar to those for lower-redshift OHMs. A comparison between optical and OH redshifts offers a slight indication of an OH outflow. This detection represents the first step toward a systematic exploitation of OHMs as a tracer of galaxy growth at high redshifts.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Middle East Library > Medical Science
Depositing User: Unnamed user with email support@middle-eastlibrary.com
Date Deposited: 27 Apr 2023 08:51
Last Modified: 02 Sep 2024 12:47
URI: http://editor.openaccessbook.com/id/eprint/639

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