A dearth of OH/IR stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
  We present the results of targeted observations and a survey of 1612-, 1665-,
and 1667-MHz circumstellar OH maser emission from asymptotic giant branch (AGB)
stars and red supergiants (RSGs) in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), using the
Parkes and Australia Telescope Compact Array radio telescopes. No clear OH
maser emission has been detected in any of our observations targeting luminous,
long-period, large-amplitude variable stars, which have been confirmed
spectroscopically and photometrically to be mid- to late-M spectral type. These
observations have probed 3 - 4 times deeper than any OH maser survey in the
SMC. Using a bootstrapping method with LMC and Galactic OH/IR star samples and
our SMC observation upper limits, we have calculated the likelihood of not
detecting maser emission in any of the two sources considered to be the top
maser candidates to be less than 0.05%, assuming a similar pumping mechanism as
the LMC and Galactic OH/IR sources. We have performed a population comparison
of the Magellanic Clouds and used Spitzer IRAC and MIPS photometry to confirm
that we have observed all high luminosity SMC sources that are expected to
exhibit maser emission. We suspect that, compared to the OH/IR stars in the
Galaxy and LMC, the reduction in metallicity may curtail the dusty wind phase
at the end of the evolution of the most massive cool stars. We also suspect
that the conditions in the circumstellar envelope change beyond a simple
scaling of abundances and wind speed with metallicity.
