We have detected a SiO maser line (v=1, J=2- 1) for 15 stars out of about 80 long period variables in the wide range of period. No new sources are detected; all detected sources are variables with period longer than 300 days; no evidence is found that the dust grains in the outer envelope have influenced on this line. The time variation of this maser line for 7 stars, T Cep, μ Cep, U Her, R Leo, R Lmi, U Ori, and R Ser is observed and compared with optical light curve at the same epoch of maser observation. No universial relation between the time variation and the optical light curve is found. It implies that the radiation from a central star does not much play an important role for the direct pumping of the SiO maser line.

In principle, both radiation and collision are capable of pumping the SiO masers. In order to check which pumping mechanism is more efficient, we calculated the rate equation for our model including the 3 vibrational slates with 7 rotational states of each vibrational slate. Through solving the radiative transfer equation with the Sovolev approximation, we estimated the line profiles from an expanding envelope for several transitions. It is found that the collision works more efficiently than the radiation for the inversion in excited vibrational stales. However in an expanding envelope model we could not get the strong line intensity as observed one because the population inversion is possible only in a small restricted region. For the enough population inversion to get type observed maser intensity. the number density of SiO and hydrogen molecules should be up to about 2×105cm−3 2×105cm−3 and 1×109cm−3 1×109cm−3 , respectively, and the inversion should be occured in the region of no Jess than 11014cm.