EXPLORING THE LOW-MASS END OF THE M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} RELATION WITH ACTIVE GALAXIES
- Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Irvine, 4129 Frederick Reines Hall, Irvine, CA 92697-4575 (United States)
- University of Texas at Austin, Department of Astronomy, 1 University Station, C1400, Austin, TX 78712-0259 (United States)
- The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Astronomy Offices, One Park Place South SE, Suite 700, Atlanta, GA 30303 (United States)
We present new measurements of stellar velocity dispersions, using spectra obtained with the Keck Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) and the Magellan Echellette (MagE), for 76 Seyfert 1 galaxies from the recent catalog of Greene and Ho. These objects were selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to have estimated black hole (BH) masses below 2 x 10{sup 6} M{sub sun}. Combining our results with previous ESI observations of similar objects, we obtain an expanded sample of 93 galaxies and examine the relation between BH mass and velocity dispersion (the M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation) for active galaxies with low BH masses. The low-mass active galaxies tend to follow the extrapolation of the M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation of inactive galaxies. Including results for active galaxies of higher BH mass from the literature, we find a zero point {alpha} = 7.68 {+-} 0.08 and slope of {beta} = 3.32 {+-} 0.22 for the M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation (in the form log M{sub BH} = {alpha} + {beta}log ({sigma}{sub *}/200 km s{sup -1})), with intrinsic scatter of 0.46 {+-} 0.03 dex. This result is consistent, within the uncertainties, with the slope of the M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation for reverberation-mapped active galaxies with BH masses from 10{sup 6} to 10{sup 9} M{sub sun}. For the subset of our sample having morphological information from Hubble Space Telescope images, we examine the slope of the M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation separately for subsamples of barred and unbarred host galaxies, and find no significant evidence for a difference in slope. We do find a mild offset between low-inclination and high-inclination disk galaxies, such that more highly inclined galaxies tend to have larger {sigma}{sub *} at a given value of BH mass, presumably due to the contribution of disk rotation within the spectroscopic aperture. We also find that the velocity dispersion of the ionized gas, measured from narrow emission lines including [N II] {lambda}6583, [S II] {lambda}{lambda}6716, 6731, and the core of [O III] {lambda}5007 (with the blueshifted wing removed), trace the stellar velocity dispersion well for this large sample of low-mass Seyfert 1 galaxies.
- OSTI ID:
- 21587530
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 739, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/739/1/28; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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