A search for extragalactic methanol masers

Abstract
A sensitive search for 6.7-GHz methanol maser emission has been made towards 10 galaxies which have yielded detectable microwave molecular-line transitions. These include several that show OH megamaser or superluminous H2O maser emission. Within the Galaxy, CH3OH and OH masers often occur in the same star formation regions and, in most cases, the CH3OH masers have greater peak flux densities than their OH counterparts. Thus we might expect CH3OH masers to be associated with extragalactic OH maser sources. We failed to detect any emission or absorption above our 60-mJy detection limit. We conclude that, if the physical conditions exist to produce CH3OH megamaser emission, they are incompatible with the conditions that produce OH megamaser emission.
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