| 總結: | OH absorption is currently the only viable way to detect OH molecules in non-masing galaxies at cosmological distances. There have been only six such detections at z > 0.05 to date and so it is hard to put a statistically robust constraint on OH column densities in distant galaxies. We carried out a pilot OH absorption survey towards eight associated and one intervening H i 21-cm absorbers using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We were able to constrain the OH abundance relative to H i ([OH]/[H i]) to be lower than 10-6 ∼10-8 for redshifts z [0.1919, 0.2241]. Although no individual detection was made, stacking three associated absorbers free of RFI provides a sensitive OH column density 3σ upper-limit $\sim 1.57 ×1014(TxOH/10\,\mathrmK)(1/fcOH}cm-2, which corresponds to a [OH]/[H i] < 5.45 × 10-8. Combining with archival data, we show that associated absorbers have a slightly lower OH abundance than intervening absorbers. Our results are consistent with a trend of decreasing OH abundance with decreasing redshift.
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