Maser sources in astrophysics (Q2886989)

The study of astrophysical masers, an important topic of radioastronomy, began in the mid 1960s. Today, masers have many astrophysical applications. Books on astrophysical masers were already written by A.H.\ Cook in 1977, a decade after the masers' discovery, and in 1992 by M.\ Elitzur. Since that time, a number of developments, especially of the observational hardware and the computational modeling, occurred that gave reason to write a new book.NEWLINENEWLINEIn the introduction of the new book, the basic principles of a maser (or also laser) are introduced. The model of the simplest maser in a three-level atomic system is developed. Here, on the one hand, the rate equation for the populations of the energy levels is solved, producing a condition for level inversion. On the other hand, the amplification of the maser radiation through a medium sustaining the inversion is considered. A brief review of the history of the development of masers and lasers is given. Further, the differences between laboratory and astrophysical masers are mentioned. It is made clear, that astrophysical masers are many-mode systems, they are amplified during a single pass through a large-scale masing gas.NEWLINENEWLINEThe discovery of the major maser species in space is discussed in more detail in chapter 2. This chapter may be understood by a reader with little mathematical knowledge. OH masers of massive stars, supernovae remnants, stars with high mass-loss, cores of external galaxies, and comets are reviewed. The 22-GHz water maser towards the Orion and the water megamasers based on a nuclear accretion disk or on the interaction of AGN jets with molecular gas are presented. Further, masers based on silicon monoxide in star-forming regions and evolved stars, methanol maser emissions, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, and other masers observed in astrophysics are briefly discussed. Devoting the book mainly to molecular masers, also the free-electron maser is mentioned. Chapter 2 ends with a case study of the W3(OH) region of the star-forming cloud complex in the constellation of Cassiopeia.NEWLINENEWLINEChapter 3 provides sufficient information to understand astrophysical masers at a fairly basic level, whilst chapter 7 offers a more accurate description. The theory of astrophysical masers consists of two connected parts, on the molecular physics calculation of the population density inversion of the maser generating particles at a position in space depending on the radiation transport, and on the solution of the non-local radiation transport problem depending in the population densities of all particles along the radiation path. Thus chapter 3 introduces the rate equations of non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) theory. Besides a relation to calculate the population inversion of the molecules, a description how to integrate the source function formally, and the derivation of a rather general form of the radiation transfer equation (without considering details of coherence effects) are given. The standard astrophysical maser equation is introduced, which contains (in comparison with the relation given in chapter 1) the lineshape function explicitly. Solutions of the maser equation with complete, negligible and partial velocity redistribution are discussed. Further the 1612-MHz OH shell maser in evolved stars is treated in detail considering a divergent beam in a non-stationary active medium with spontaneous emission. Finally an introduction is given how to deal with the transport of polarized radiation through a medium.NEWLINENEWLINEChapter 4 provides the reader with sufficient knowledge of radio techniques to understand the modern maser observing procedures. The author does not draw much attention to the (radio, millimeter and sub-millimeter) wavebands of maser observations as the basic techniques are similar in these bands, but he concentrates on the more important difference between single-dish observations and interferometry.NEWLINENEWLINEAs most astrophysical masers originate from molecules, chapter 5 is devoted to molecular spectroscopy. Here it is pointed out that from the 129 species detected in space, only 11 molecules (and the hydrogen atom) are known to give rise to masers. The most complex maser molecule known up to now, methanol, has only 6 atoms. But despite their simplicity, the maser molecules have a large variety of chemical structures. Electronic transitions are rarely involved in the pumping of astrophysical masers, but the rotational and vibrational levels are of strong importance, and there are effects of nuclear spins as in water molecules.NEWLINENEWLINEChapter 6 gives a modern view of the main astrophysical environments in which maser form. The most estonishing fact is the different spatial scales of masers, from scales of comets and planetary atmospheres up to molecular tori around the nuclei of galaxies of 1 kpc. It seems to be the extreme nature of the environment that helps to pump the masers. Often the gas molecules move according to one temperature, and the NLTE radiation corresponds to a higher temperature. In chapter 6 environments like early and late galactic star-forming regions, stars in their final state of life when they typically possess unstable atmospheres undergoing rapid mass loss, planetary nebulae and proto-planetary nebulae, AGN and starburst megamasers, supernova remnants, comae of comets, hot stars as hosts of H-atom Rydberg masers, as well as terrestrial and jovian atmospheres are considered in detail.NEWLINENEWLINEChapter 7 deals with the advanced theory of masers. It therefore contains considerable mathematics, and it is the most fundamental chapter from the point of view of maser physics in the present book. It is pointed out that maser radiation behaves different than ``ordinary'' radiation. This difference arises from the generation of a maser by the stimulated, rather than spontaneous, emission process. The chapter first introduces a simplified semi-classical theory, in which the molecular responses are treated quantum-physically, but the radiation field is presented classically. Then, some of the introduced idealizations are removed step by step. Thus multi-level systems with a one-dimensional maser propagation in a stationary medium are discussed next. Besides, the vector form of the radiation transfer equation is introduced which is required to understand the transport of the Stokes parameters of polarized radiation. Allowing the radiation to propagate in arbitrary directions the problem of beaming is discussed. A special section is dedicated to free-electron masers. Including details of coherence of astrophysical masers, chapter 7 considers the radiation transfer at the level of Fourier components of the electric field.NEWLINENEWLINEExcept in very simple cases, it is not possible to solve the coupled molecular physics and radiation transfer problems for masers analytically. Recently, many general radiative transfer codes are already available. However, many of them require modifications to describe maser systems. Chapter 8 presents the large velocity gradient approximation allowing to introduce much simpler numerical methods than suggested by the original problem. Then methods like the accelerated lambda iteration to solve NLTE radiation problems rapidly and direct non-linear methods reducing the equations to such in population densities only, are considered. These methods ignore any residual coherence effects. Further, some technical matters are discussed, which are related to specialist maser codes developed from the semi-classical theory of chapter 7. Two techniques are described, which accelerate the convergence of iterative computations.NEWLINENEWLINEHow masers are recently applied in astrophysics is briefly explained in chapter 9. It is considered how masers are used to measure magnetic fields in the Milky Way, to observe masses, distances as well as turbulent motions, and to determine the Hubble constant by water megamaser emissions. Attempts are described to detect the variation of what we usually accept as physical constants of nature over cosmological time.NEWLINENEWLINEThe comprehensive work ends with chapter 10 on new and future radio astronomy projects which promise to revolutionize the understanding of astrophysical masers and their environments. General material is presented about the capabilities of the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) in New Mexico, the expanded Multi-Element Radio-Linked Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN) of the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chile Andes, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia or South Africa in farther future, and the Japanese network VERA to fix the distance scale within the Milky Way by trigonometric parallax measurements.NEWLINENEWLINEThe present work is aimed at senior undergraduates, postgraduate students and research workers in astronomy. But the first two chapters and chapter 6 can also be easily read by non-specialists.