Origin of Observed Periodic Components in Astrophysical Masers’ Spectra

Abstract

Further analysis of data previously obtained during the monitoring observations of 49 astrophysical water (22 GHz) masers shows that in some cases the intensity of an individual component of the maser spectrum changes periodically, on time-scales of tens of minutes. It is argued that this variation cannot be the effect of instrumental errors, weather conditions or interstellar medium instabilities, because only a single feature of the maser spectrum fluctuates but not the whole spectrum. The suggested interpretation of this effect is based on the optic-metrical parametric resonance produced by gravitational radiation emitted by short-period binary stars, with the examples of such binaries sufficing the conditions given.