Excited-state hydroxyl maser polarimetry

We observed 30 fields of OH masers in full Stokes polarization with the Compact Array Broadband Backend at both the 6030 and 6035 MHz excited-state OH transitions, and the 6668 MHz methanol maser transition, detecting 70 sites of maser emission. Amongst the OH we found 112 Zeeman pairs, of which 18 exhibited candidate {pi} components.

This is the largest single full polarimetric study of multiple sites of star formation for these frequencies, and the rate of 16 percent {pi} components clearly indicates that the {pi} component exists, and is comparable to the percentage recently found for ground-state transitions. This significant percentage of {pi} components, with consistent proportions at both ground- and excited-state transitions, argues against Faraday rotation suppressing the {pi} component emission.