Landing page for project EL074

The OH megamaser activity in (U)LIRG galaxies results from amplification of background radio continuum by foreground excited OH gas extended across part or all of the face of the nuclear region. Nonuniform continuum backgrounds and cloud-based amplification may explain both the observed compact high-brightness components and the diffuse extended components in prominent OH MM. Although there is a quite good understanding of the physics of the OH MM phenomenon, certain questions remain how this physical picture translates into a spatial distribution of the amplifying components and their optical depths. This project proposes a study with high angular resolution of the spatial connection between the radio continuum background and the OH emission characteristics (and the low-resolution FIR properties) in different (U)LIRG environments. In these proposal we request EVN and e-MERLIN imaging of the radio continuum and the spectral line of two nearby OH MM, IR12112+0305 and IR16399-0937.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197