Circumnuclear Dust in Nearby Active and Inactive Galaxies. II. Bars, Nuclear Spirals, and the Fueling of Active Galactic Nuclei

By P. Martini, M. Regan, J. Mulchaey, R. Pogge. 2002

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We present a detailed study of the relation between circumnuclear dust morphology, host-galaxy properties, and nuclear activity in nearby galaxies. We use our sample of 123 nearby galaxies with visible-near-infrared color maps from the Hubble Space Telescope to create well-matched, "paired" samples of 28 active and 28 inactive galaxies, as well as 19 barred and 19 unbarred galaxies, that have the same host-galaxy properties. Comparison of the barred and unbarred galaxies shows that grand-design nuclear dust spirals are found only in galaxies with a large-scale bar. These nuclear dust spirals, which are present in approximately one-third of all barred galaxies, also appear to be connected to the dust lanes along the leading edges of the large-scale bars. Grand-design nuclear spirals are more common than inner rings, which are present in only a small minority of the barred galaxies. Tightly wound nuclear dust spirals, in contrast, show a strong tendency to avoid galaxies with large-scale bars. Comparison of the active galactic nuclei (AGNs)and inactive samples shows that nuclear dust spirals, which may trace shocks and angular momentum dissipation in the interstellar medium, occur with comparable frequency in both active and inactive galaxies. The only difference between the active and inactive galaxies is that several inactive galaxies appear to completely lack dust structure in their circumnuclear region, while none of the AGNs lack this structure. The comparable frequency of nuclear spirals in active and inactive galaxies, combined with previous work that finds no significant difference in the frequency of bars or interactions between well-matched active and inactive galaxies, suggests that no universal fueling mechanism for low-luminosity AGNs operates at spatial scales greater than a ~100 pc radius from the galactic nuclei. The similarities of the circumnuclear environments of active and inactive galaxies suggest that the lifetime of nuclear activity is less than the characteristic inflow time from these spatial scales. An order-of-magnitude estimate of this inflow time is the dynamical timescale. This sets an upper limit of several million years to the lifetime of an individual episode of nuclear activity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5672bfd17b142da6e1036e28cd73fc486113304a

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Citations in the corpus

Near-Infrared and Star-forming Properties of Local Luminous Infrared Galaxies (2006, background): “Two-armed spiral arm structures are also observed extending down to the center (inner kpc scale, the so-called nuclear dusty spirals, see Martini et al. 2003).”
The Star-forming Torus and Stellar Dynamical Black Hole Mass in the Seyfert 1 Nucleus of NGC 3227 (2006, background): “For example, HST imaging shows no dependence of AGN activity on the presence of a nuclear spiral (Martini et al. 2003).”
Molecular gas in NUclei of GAlaxies (NUGA) - IV. Gravitational torques and AGN feeding (2005, unknown): “…(1999) and Pogge & Martini (2002) initially found a high frequency of dusty spirals in the HST enhanced color images of Seyfert nuclei of their sample, more recently, Martini et al. (2003) have shown on a firmer statistical basis that these nuclear features are not preferentially found in AGN.”
What controls star formation in the central 500 pc of the Galaxy (2013, background): “Such relatively brief episodes of nuclear activity are thought to last up to several Myr, and are supported by HST observations of nearby galaxies (Martini et al. 2003).”
How do massive black holes get their gas (2009, background): “3 (see Martini & Pogge 1999; Peletier et al. 1999; Knapen et al. 2000, 2002; Laine et al. 2002; Martini et al. 2003; Greene et al. 2009, and references therein).”
TORUS AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS PROPERTIES OF NEARBY SEYFERT GALAXIES: RESULTS FROM FITTING INFRARED SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS AND SPECTROSCOPY (2011, background): “A1: Maiolino et al. (2000).”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “…local Universe, with AGNs and galaxies not hosting AGN activity equally likely to host kpc-scale bars (e.g., Mulchaey & Regan, 1997; Knapen et al., 2000; Martini et al., 2003; Simões Lopes et al., 2007); however, we note that a relationship is found for narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (see §3.2.3).”