2024ApJ...971...92N

Broad Hα and Hβ emission lines (FWHM > 1000 km s^–1) are incredibly efficient tracers of the high-velocity clouds encircling active galactic nuclei (AGNs). As a result, we search for these broad-line AGN in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) catalog. We identify 301 broad-line Hα galaxies and 801 broad-line Hβ galaxies in the catalog. In total, we detect 1042 unique broad-line galaxies with luminosities between 10³⁷ and 10⁴³ erg s^–1; 60 feature both broad Hα and broad Hβ emission. We also determine that the broad-line region radius ranges between 0.01 and 46 lt-days, with a median radius of 0.1 lt-days (0.02 pc) for our broad Hβ sample. In addition, we find that both samples feature a higher fraction of galaxy mergers (44% for the broad Hα sample and 43% for the broad Hβ sample), compared to the full MaNGA galaxy sample (26%), which suggests that merger-driven fueling is strongly active in our sample.