Abstract:
Seyfert galaxies, in which accretion onto a massive nuclear black hole acts as a powerful energy source, allegedly have bulges more luminous per unit mass than those in normal galaxies. We have tested this claim through the application of well-known correlations to Hubble Space Telescope images of 26 Seyfert 2 galaxies. One-dimensional and two-dimensional luminosity decomposition was performed to obtain bulge luminosities for each galaxy. The one-dimensional technique is simpler to implement, but it results in a loss of data and is more dependent on the empirical model chosen for the bulge. Accordingly, we utilized the one-dimensional fit parameters as a basis for refined two-dimensional decomposition. We also constructed the Faber-Jackson relation, a correlation between bulge luminosity and velocity dispersion, a parameter which scales with the mass of the galactic bulge. By comparing the relation for our sample of Seyfert galaxies to that of normal galaxies, we explore the proposition that bulges in Seyfert galaxies tend to be more luminous.
