Black hole mass and velocity dispersion of narrow line region in active galactic nuclei and narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxies

Center for Astrophysics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, PR China National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, PR China e-mail: twang@ustc.edu.cn

Corresponding author: Y. Lu, lyj@astro.princeton.edu

Received: 6 June 2001
Accepted: 12 July 2001

Abstract

Controversy regarding whether Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) follow the same black hole -galactic bulge relation as normal galaxies has been raised by Mathur et al. ([CITE]) and Ferrarese et al. ([CITE]). In this paper, the correlation between the black hole mass and the velocity dispersion of the narrow line region, indicated by the [OIII] line width for a heterogeneous sample of NLS1s, is examined. We show that the non-virial component subtracted [OIII] width, which may well represent the stellar velocity dispersion (σ), correlates with the estimated black hole mass M_BH, made using the empirical law for the size of the broad line region from the reverberation mapping measurements. Considering measurement errors, we find that the relation between M_BH and the [OIII] width in active galactic nuclei (both NLS1s in this paper and normal Seyferts in Nelson [CITE]) is consistent with that defined in nearby hot galaxies (ellipticals and spiral bulge) but with more scatter. It seems that there is no clear difference in the relation between M_BH and σ (represented by the [OIII] width for AGN) in both NLS1s and normal broad line active galactic nuclei from the same relation defined by nearby hot galaxies.