Stellar and Gaseous Kinematics of Seyfert Galaxies. II. The Role of the Bulge

Nelson, Charles R.; Whittle, M.

doi:10.1086/177405

Cited by 239 publications

(352 citation statements)

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“…It has long been known that the [O iii] line width traces the bulge velocity dispersion in low-luminosity AGNs (e.g., Heckman et al 1981;Whittle 1992aWhittle , 1992bNelson & Whittle 1996). Recently, with the discovery of the M BH -σ * relation (Gebhardt et al 2000;Ferrarese & Merritt 2000), interest in the gas velocity dispersion (σ g ) has increased, due to the possibility of using it as a proxy for σ * in distant or luminous active galaxies for which it is prohibitive to measure σ * directly (e.g., Nelson 2000;Wang & Lu 2001;Boroson 2002;Shields et al 2003;Grupe & Mathur 2004;Onken et al 2004;Greene & Ho 2005a;Rice et al 2006;Salviander et al 2007).…”

Section: Comparison Of Stellar and Gaseous Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Growth of Black Holes: Insights From Obscured Active Galaxies

Greene

Zakamska

Liu

et al. 2009

ApJ

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Obscured or narrow-line active galaxies offer an unobstructed view of the quasar environment in the presence of a luminous and vigorously accreting black hole (BH). We exploit the large new sample of optically selected luminous narrow-line active galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at redshifts 0.1 < z < 0.45, in conjunction with follow-up observations with the Low Dispersion Survey Spectrograph (LDSS3) at Magellan, to study the distributions of BH mass and host galaxy properties in these extreme objects. We find a narrow range in BH mass ( log M BH /M = 8.0 ± 0.7) and Eddington ratio ( log L bol /L Edd = −0.7 ± 0.7) for the sample as a whole, surprisingly similar to comparable broad-line systems. In contrast, we infer a wide range in star formation properties and host morphologies for the sample, from disk-dominated to elliptical galaxies. Nearly one-quarter have highly disturbed morphologies indicative of ongoing mergers. Unlike the BHs, which are apparently experiencing significant growth, the galaxies appear to have formed the bulk of their stars at a previous epoch. On the other hand, it is clear from the lack of correlation between gaseous and stellar velocity dispersions in these systems that the host galaxy interstellar medium is far from being in virial equilibrium with the stars. While our findings cast strong doubt on the reliability of substituting gas for stellar dispersions in high luminosity active galaxies, they do provide direct evidence that luminous accreting BHs influence their surroundings on a galaxy-wide scale.

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Section: Comparison Of Stellar and Gaseous Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Growth of Black Holes: Insights From Obscured Active Galaxies

Greene

Zakamska

Liu

et al. 2009

ApJ

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“…Indeed, post starburst stellar populations have been observed around AGN (Dultzin-Hacyan & Benitez 1994;Maiolino & Rieke 1995;Nelson & Whittle 1996;Hunt et al 1997;Maiolino et al 1997;Boisson et al 2000Boisson et al , 2004Cid Fernandes et al 1998 and in close proximity to the core (∼50 pc). This fact implies the continuity of these two states and a delay of 50-250 Myr between the onset of the starburst and the feeding of the AGN (e.g., Müller Sánchez et al 2008;Wild et al 2010;Davies et al 2012), which may reach the peak of its activity after ∼500 Myr (Kaviraj et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activity of the Seyfert galaxy neighbours

Koulouridis

Plionis

Chavushyan

et al. 2013

A&A

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We present a follow-up study of a series of papers concerning the role of close interactions as a possible triggering mechanism of AGN activity. We have already studied the close (≤100 h −1 kpc) and the large-scale (≤1 h −1 Mpc) environment of a local sample of Sy1, Sy2, and bright IRAS galaxies (BIRG) and of their respective control samples. The results led us to the conclusion that a close encounter appears capable of activating a sequence where an absorption line galaxy (ALG) galaxy first becomes a starburst, then a Sy2, and finally a Sy1. Here we investigate the activity of neighbouring galaxies of different types of AGN, since both galaxies of an interacting pair should be affected. To this end we present the optical spectroscopy and X-ray imaging of 30 neighbouring galaxies around two local (z 0.034) samples of 10 Sy1 and 13 Sy2 galaxies. Although this is a pilot study of a small sample, various interesting trends have been discovered that imply physical mechanisms that may lead to different Seyfert types. Based on the optical spectroscopy, we find that more than 70% of all neighbouring galaxies exhibit star forming and/or nuclear activity (namely recent star formation and/or AGN), while an additional X-ray analysis showed that this percentage might be significantly higher. Furthermore, we find a statistically significant correlation, at a 99.9% level, between the value of the neighbour's [OIII]/Hβ ratio and the activity type of the central active galaxy, i.e. the neighbours of Sy2 galaxies are systematically more ionized than the neighbours of Sy1s. This result, in combination with trends found using the Equivalent Width of the Hα emission line and the stellar population synthesis code STARLIGHT, indicate differences in the stellar mass, metallicity, and star formation history between the samples. Our results point towards a link between close galaxy interactions and activity and also provide more clues regarding the possible evolutionary sequence inferred by our previous studies.

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“…The emission from the narrow-line region (NLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is an important tool for the study of the relationship between the activity of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) and the growth of the host galaxy in which the SMBH resides, both because the NLR emission mainly results from illumination by the central AGN and because the NLR kinematics is believed to be mainly dominated by the gravity of the bulge (see Wilson & Heckman 1985, and references therein;Whittle 1992aWhittle , 1992bNelson & Whittle 1996 for a review). The gravity-dominated kinematics motivates a number of previous studies to demonstrate that the line width of the AGN's strong [O iii] λ5007 emission line can be used as a proxy for the stellar velocity dispersion of the bulge (e.g., Nelson & Whittle 1996;Nelson 2000;Boroson 2003;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The gravity-dominated kinematics motivates a number of previous studies to demonstrate that the line width of the AGN's strong [O iii] λ5007 emission line can be used as a proxy for the stellar velocity dispersion of the bulge (e.g., Nelson & Whittle 1996;Nelson 2000;Boroson 2003;. Based upon the tight M BH -σ * relationship (e.g., Tremaine et al 2002;Ferrarese & Merritt 2000;Magorrian et al 1998;Gebhardt et al 2000;Haring & Rix 2004;Graham et al 2011), the proxy therefore allows one to easily estimate M BH in a large sample of AGNs (e.g., Grupe & Mathur 2004;Wang & Lu 2001;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of [O Iii] Λ5007 Emission-Line Profiles in Narrow Emission-Line Galaxies

Wang

Mao

Wei

2011

ApJ

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The active galactic nucleus (AGN)-host co-evolution issue is investigated here by focusing on the evolution of the [O iii] λ5007 emission-line profile. A large sample of narrow emission-line galaxies is selected from the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics/Johns Hopkins University Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 catalog to simultaneously measure both the [O iii] line profile and circumnuclear stellar population in an individual spectrum. By requiring that (1) the [O iii] line signal-to-noise ratio is larger than 30 and (2) the [O iii] line width is larger than the instrumental resolution by a factor of two, our sample is narrowed down to 2333 Seyfert galaxies/LINERs (AGNs), 793 transition galaxies, and 190 star-forming galaxies. In addition to the commonly used profile parameters (i.e., line centroid, relative velocity shift, and velocity dispersion), two dimensionless shape parameters, skewness and kurtosis, are used to quantify the line shape deviation from a pure Gaussian function. We show that the transition galaxies are systematically associated with narrower line widths and weaker [O iii] broad wings than the AGNs, which implies that the kinematics of emission-line gas are different in the two kinds of objects. By combining the measured host properties and line shape parameters, we find that the AGNs with stronger blue asymmetries tend to be associated with younger stellar populations. However, a similar trend is not identified in the transition galaxies. The failure likely results from a selection effect in which the transition galaxies are systematically associated with younger stellar populations than the AGNs. The evolutionary significance revealed here suggests that both narrow-line region kinematics and outflow feedback in AGNs co-evolve with their host galaxies.

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Stellar and Gaseous Kinematics of Seyfert Galaxies. II. The Role of the Bulge

Cited by 239 publications

References 0 publications

The Growth of Black Holes: Insights From Obscured Active Galaxies

The Growth of Black Holes: Insights From Obscured Active Galaxies

Activity of the Seyfert galaxy neighbours

Evolution of [O Iii] Λ5007 Emission-Line Profiles in Narrow Emission-Line Galaxies

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