A Search for OH Megamasers at z > 0.1. I. Preliminary Results

We present the preliminary results of a survey for OH megamasers underway atthe Arecibo Observatory. The goals of the survey are to calibrate theluminosity function of OH megamasers to the low-redshift galaxy merger rate(0.1 < z < 0.2), and to use the enhanced sample of OH megamasers provided bythe survey to study OH megamaser environments, engines, lifetimes, andstructure. The survey should double the known OH megamaser sample to roughly100 objects. Survey results will be presented in installments to facilitatecommunity access to the data. Here we report the discovery of 11 OH megamasersand one OH absorber, and include upper limits on the isotropic 1667 MHz OH lineluminosity of 53 other luminous infrared galaxies at z > 0.1. The newmegamasers show a wide range of spectral properties, but are consistent withthe extant set of 55 previously reported objects, only 8 of which have z > 0.1.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa