Saturation and beaming in astrophysical masers. II - The fully saturated limit

Radiative transfer in fully saturated maser clouds has been investigated using the 'four-stream' model equations of Alcock and Ross (1985). It is shown that a modest elongation of the maser cloud produces a substantial asymmetry in the maser output. The ratio of output fluxes in different directions is a strong function of the ratio of the corresponding chord lengths across the cloud. Arguments are presented that the asymmetries reported here for the 'four-stream' models closely mimic the asymmetries that should be expected in a real master cloud.