A search for OH megamasers at z>0.1.: I.: Preliminary results

We present the preliminary results of a survey for OH megamasers underway at the Arecibo Observatory.(1) The goals of the survey are to calibrate the luminosity 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 by the survey to study OH megamaser environments, engines, lifetimes, and structure. The survey should double the known OH megamaser sample to roughly 100 objects. Survey results will be presented in installments to facilitate community access to the data. Here we report the discovery of 11 OH megamasers and one OH absorber, and we include upper limits on the isotropic 1667 MHz OH line luminosity of 53 other luminous infrared galaxies at z > 0.1. The new megamasers show a wide range of spectral properties but are consistent with the extant set of 55 previously reported objects, only eight of which have z > 0.1.