Nuclear activity and stellar population of a sample of interacting galaxies

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the nuclear activity and stellar population in a sample of 27 physical galaxy pairs. Equivalent widths of absorption features are used to characterise the nuclear stellar population according to templates: most galaxies of the sample have important flux contributions from stars younger than 108 years. According to classical diagnosticdiagrams the galaxies in our sample are either classified as H II regions or have emission line ratios near the transition zone between H II regions and LINERs. Based on the observed spectra, only 4 galaxies show LINER properties and 1 nucleus is a Seyfert 2. We found that the spectrum of a transition object (38% of the sample) can be described by a combination of an AGN with an HII region. As a result, 20 galaxies of the present sample may host a low-luminosity active nucleus.