Looking at the distant universe with the MeerKAT array: discovery of a luminous 
OH megamaser at z > 0.5

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

doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ac63b0

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Looking at the distant universe with the MeerKAT array: discovery of a luminous OH megamaser at z > 0.5

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Schröder, Anja C.
High Energy Astrophysics, MPI for Extraterrestrial Physics, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Glowacki, M., Collier, J. D., Kazemi-Moridani, A., Frank, B., Roberts, H., Darling, J., et al. (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. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ac63b0.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000B-B50E-A

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 z_OH = 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 L_FIR = (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.