AGN Activity and Black Hole Masses in Low Surface Brightness Galaxies (original) (raw)

We present medium resolution optical spectroscopy of a sample of nine Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies. For those that show clear signatures of AGN emission, we have disentangled the AGN component from stellar light and any Fe I and Fe II contribution. We have decomposed the H_alpha line into narrow and broad components and determined the velocities of the broad components; typical values lie between 900--2500 km/s. Of the galaxies in our study, UGC 6614, UGC 1922, UGC 6968 and LSBC F568-6 (Malin~2) show clear signatures of AGN activity. We have calculated the approximate black hole masses for these galaxies from the H_alpha line emission using the virial approximation. The black hole masses are ~3x10^{5} M_sun for three galaxies and lie in the intermediate mass black holes domain rather than the supermassive range. UGC 6614 harbors a BH of mass 3.8x10^{6} M_sun; it also shows an interesting feature blueward of H_alpha and H_beta implying outflow of gas or a one-sided jet strea...