TL;DR
This paper reviews the role of luminous extragalactic masers, especially megamasers, in studying active galactic nuclei (AGN), highlighting their importance in understanding nuclear structures, measuring distances, and testing AGN models.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive overview of how maser observations contribute to AGN research, emphasizing their diagnostic and measurement capabilities.
Findings
Masers trace nuclear structures in AGN.
Megamasers help measure galaxy distances.
OH masers relate to star formation in galaxies.
Abstract
Luminous extragalactic masers are traditionally referred to as the `megamasers'. Those produced by water molecules are associated with accretion disks, radio jets, or outflows in the nuclear regions of active galactic nuclei (AGN). The majority of OH maser sources are instead driven by intense star formation in ultra-luminous infrared galaxies, although in a few cases the OH maser emission traces rotating (toroidal or disk) structures around the nuclear engines of AGN. Thus, detailed maser studies provide a fundamental contribution to our knowledge of the main nuclear components of AGN, constitute unique tools to measure geometric distances of host galaxies, and have a great impact on probing the, so far, paradigmatic Unified Model of AGN.
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