Discovery of Pulsed OH Maser Emission Stimulated by a Pulsar

Details Discovery of Pulsed OH Maser Emission Stimulated by a Pulsar Discovery of Pulsed OH Maser Emission Stimulated by a Pulsar

2005-05-11

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505231v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Accepted by Science

Scientific paper

10.1126/science.1112494

Stimulated emission of radiation has not been directly observed in astrophysical situations up to this time. Here we demonstrate that photons from pulsar B1641-45 stimulate pulses of excess 1720 MHz line emission in an interstellar OH cloud. As this stimulated emission is driven by the pulsar, it varies on a few millisecond timescale, orders of magnitude shorter than the quickest OH maser variations previously detected. Our 1612 MHz spectra are inverted copies of the 1720 MHz spectra. This "conjugate line" phenomenon enables us to constrain the properties of the interstellar OH line-producing gas. We also show that pulsar signals suffer significantly deeper OH absorption than do other background sources; confirming earlier tentative findings that OH clouds are clumpier on small scales than neutral hydrogen clouds.

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