Kinematics and excitation mechanisms of molecular hydrogen and [FeII] lines in active galactic nuclei

Near-infrared spectroscopic observations in the range 0.8-2.4μm are used to study the kinematics and excitation mechanisms of Molecular Hydrogen and [FeII] lines in a sample of AGNs. The width of H2 lines is narrower than [FeII] lines, therefore they do not originate from the same parcel of gas. The molecular emission is found to be purely thermal but with heating processes which vary among the objects. A clear correlation between H2/Brγ and [FeII] 1.257μm/Paβ is found for our sample objects supplemented with data from the literature. The correlation of these line ratios is a useful diagnostic tool in the NIR to separate emitting line objects by their level of nuclear activity.