Non-Keplerian rotation in the nucleus of NGC 1068: evidence for a massive accretion disk?

The nucleus of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 is believed to host a supermassive black hole. Evidence for the presence of a massive central object is provided by water maser emission, which displays a linear pattern in the sky, suggestive of a rotating disk. The rotating disk hypothesis is further strengthened by the declining shape of the derived rotation curve. Similar maser emission from NGC 4258 has led to a reliable estimate of the mass of the central black hole, because in this case the rotation curve is Keplerian. In the case of NGC 1068 the rotation curve traced by the water maser is non-Keplerian. In this paper we provide an interpretation of the non-Keplerian rotation in NGC 1068 by means of a self-gravitating accretion disk model. We obtain a good fit to the available data and derive a black hole mass M. approximate to (8.0 +/- 0.3) x 10(6) M.. The resulting disk mass is comparable to the black hole mass. As an interesting by-product of our fitting procedure, we are able to estimate the viscosity parameter, which turns out to be alpha approximate to 10(-2), in line with some theoretical expectations.