Physical conditions around high-mass young star-forming objects via simultaneous observations of excited OH and methanol masers

¹ Institute of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Grudziadzka 5, 87–100 Torun, Poland
² INAF-Istituto di Radioastronomia, Via P. Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
³ JBCA, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

^★ Corresponding author; akobak@astro.umk.pl

Received: 18 October 2024
Accepted: 27 January 2025

Abstract

Context. Astrophysical masers are widely used in star formation studies. In particular, they are valuable in investigations of high-mass star-forming regions that are difficult to observe at optical frequencies.

Aims. We used multi-transition data to derive physical conditions in the immediate environment of forming high-mass stars.

Methods. Simultaneous observations of two maser transitions, excited OH at 6.035 GHz and methanol at 6.668 GHz, were made using e-Merlin. Both transitions are radiatively pumped but prefer diverse physical conditions.

Results. We imaged ten high-mass star-forming sites with milliarcsecond angular resolution, identifying regions where excited OH and methanol masers coexist and where they avoid each other. Moreover, we identified circularly polarized Zeeman splitting pairs of the OH transition, estimating magnetic field strengths in the range from 0.2 to 10.6 mG. The detection of linearly polarized components enabled us to compare the directions of magnetic field vectors with the outflows coming from the young star-forming objects.

Conclusions. We found that the two maser lines appeared to coexist in six high-mass star-forming regions, in cloudlets separated by up to 205 au. Where the lines show avoidance, this can be related to changes in dust and gas temperatures; we also found a few examples suggestive of a high gas density. In seven sources, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests show the nonrandom relationship between the position angles of distribution of the two maser transitions. We did not obtain consistent results regarding the direction of the magnetic field and outflow.