Recent theoretical and observational works indicate the presence of a correlation between the star formation rate ( SFR ) and the active galactic nuclei ( AGN ) luminosity ( and , therefore , the black hole accretion rate , \dot { M } _ { BH } ) of Seyfert galaxies .
This suggests a physical connection between the gas forming stars on kpc scales and the gas on sub-pc scales that is feeding the black hole .
We compiled the largest sample of Seyfert galaxies to date with high angular resolution ( \sim 0.4 - 0.8 ″ ) mid-infrared ( 8–13 \upmu m ) spectroscopy .
The sample includes 29 Seyfert galaxies drawn from the AGN Revised Shapley-Ames catalogue .
At a median distance of 33 Mpc , our data allow us to probe nuclear regions on scales of \sim 65 pc ( median value ) .
We found no general evidence of suppression of the 11.3 \upmu m polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon ( PAH ) emission in the vicinity of these AGN , and used this feature as a proxy for the SFR .
We detected the 11.3 \upmu m PAH feature in the nuclear spectra of 45 % of our sample .
The derived nuclear SFRs are , on average , five times lower than those measured in circumnuclear regions of 600 pc in size ( median value ) .
However , the projected nuclear SFR densities ( median value of 22 M _ { \odot } yr ^ { -1 } { kpc } ^ { -2 } ) are a factor of 20 higher than those measured on circumnuclear scales .
This indicates that the SF activity per unit area in the central \sim 65 pc of Seyfert galaxies is much higher than at larger distances from their nuclei .
We studied the connection between the nuclear SFR and \dot { M } _ { BH } and showed that numerical simulations reproduce fairly well our observed relation .