Nuclear Dust Morphology of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies

We present a study of the nuclear morphology of a sample of 96 narrow- and broad-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s and BLS1s). In a previous study, we found that large-scale stellar bars are more common in NLS1s than BLS1s. This was different from the picture that Seyfert galaxies do not on the whole show any excess of large-scale bars. Since NLS1s have high accretion rates, we initiated a study to see if NLS1s and BLS1s show any significant differences in their nuclear morphology. We find that NLS1s preferentially have grand-design nuclear dust spirals at their centers. We also find that, in general, barred Seyfert 1s have a higher fraction of nuclear dust spirals in their centers (within 1 kpc) compared to those without bars, which is consistent with previous results.