A pilot search for extragalactic OH absorption with FAST

ABSTRACT OH absorption is currently the only viable way to detect OH molecules in non-masing galaxies at cosmological distances. There have been only six such detections at z > 0.05 to date and so it is hard to put a statistically robust constraint on OH column densities in distant galaxies. We c...

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Veröffentlicht in:Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2020-12, Vol.499 (3), p.3085-3093
Hauptverfasser: Zheng, Zheng, Li, Di, Sadler, Elaine M, Allison, James R, Tang, Ningyu
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:ABSTRACT OH absorption is currently the only viable way to detect OH molecules in non-masing galaxies at cosmological distances. There have been only six such detections at z > 0.05 to date and so it is hard to put a statistically robust constraint on OH column densities in distant galaxies. We carried out a pilot OH absorption survey towards eight associated and one intervening H i 21-cm absorbers using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We were able to constrain the OH abundance relative to H i ([OH]/[H i]) to be lower than 10−6 ∼ 10−8 for redshifts z∈ [0.1919, 0.2241]. Although no individual detection was made, stacking three associated absorbers free of RFI provides a sensitive OH column density 3σ upper-limit $\sim 1.57 \times 10^{14} (T_x^{\rm OH}/10\,\mathrm{ K})(1/f_\mathrm{ c}^{\rm OH})\mathrm{ cm}^{-2}$, which corresponds to a [OH]/[H i] < 5.45 × 10−8. Combining with archival data, we show that associated absorbers have a slightly lower OH abundance than intervening absorbers. Our results are consistent with a trend of decreasing OH abundance with decreasing redshift.
ISSN:0035-8711
1365-2966
DOI:10.1093/mnras/staa3033