Nuclear activity and the dynamics of elliptical galaxies

This paper looks for any correlation between the internal dynamics of elliptical galaxies and the relatively mild nuclear activity found in many such systems. We show that there is such a relation in the sense that the active ellipticals tend to be significantly less rotationally supported than their inactive cousins. The correlation can partly be related to the galaxies’ luminosities: the brightest galaxies tend to be more active and less rotationally supported. However, even at lower luminosities the active and inactive galaxies seem to have systematically different dynamics. This variation suggests that there are significant large-scale structural differences between active and inactive elliptical galaxies, and hence that the existence of both types of system cannot just be the result of random sporadic nuclear activity.