VLBA Survey of OH Masers in Star-Forming Regions II: Satellite Lines

TL;DR

This study uses VLBA to survey OH maser satellite lines in star-forming regions, revealing correlations with HII regions and magnetic fields, and providing insights into high-mass star formation processes.

Contribution

It presents the first high-resolution survey of satellite OH maser lines in SFRs, highlighting their association with HII regions and magnetic fields, and discusses implications for star formation theories.

Findings

24% of sources showed 1720 MHz line emission

1720 MHz emission correlates with HII regions

Zeeman splitting observed in four sources

Abstract

Using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) we performed a high resolution OH maser survey in Galactic star-forming regions (SFRs). We observed all the ground state spectral lines: the main lines at 1665 and 1667 MHz and the satellite lines at 1612 and 1720 MHz. Due to the exceptionality of finding satellite lines in SFRs, we will focus our discussion on those lines. In our sample of 41 OH maser sources, five (12%) showed the 1612 MHz line and ten (24%) showed the 1720 MHz line, with only one source showing both lines. We find that 1720 MHz emission is correlated with the presence of HII regions, suggesting that this emission could be used to diagnose or trace high-mass star formation. We include an analysis of the possible mechanisms that could be causing this correlation as well as assessing the possible relationships between lines in our sample. In particular, the presence of magnetic fields seems to play an important role, as we found Zeeman splitting in four of our sources (W75 N, W3(OH), W51 and NGC 7538). Our results have implications for current understanding of the formation of high-mass stars as well as on the masing processes present in SFRs.