Molecular Gas in NUclei of GAlaxies (NUGA) XIII. The interacting Seyfert
  2/LINER galaxy NGC 5953
  We present $^{12}$CO(1--0) and $^{12}$CO(2--1) maps of the interacting
Seyfert 2/LINER galaxy NGC 5953 obtained with the IRAM interferometer at
resolutions of 2\farcs1 $\times$ 1\farcs4 and 1\farcs1 $\times$ 0\farcs7,
respectively. The CO emission is distributed over a disk of diameter
$\sim$16\arcsec ($\sim$2.2 kpc), within which are several, randomly distributed
peaks. The strongest peak does not coincide with the nucleus, but is instead
offset from the center, $\sim2-3^{\prime\prime}$ ($\sim$340 pc) toward the
west/southwest. The kinematics of the molecular component are quite regular, as
is typical of a rotating disk. We also compared the $^{12}$CO distribution of
NGC 5953 with observations at other wavelengths in order to study correlations
between different tracers of the interstellar medium. Using NIR images, we
computed the gravity torques exerted by the stellar potential on the gas. The
torques are predominantly positive in both $^{12}$CO(1--0) and $^{12}$CO(2--1),
suggesting that gas is not flowing into the center, and less than 5% of the gas
angular momentum is exchanged in each rotation. This comes from the regular and
almost axisymmetric total mass and gas distributions in the center of the
galaxy. In NGC 5953, the AGN is apparently not being actively fueled in the
current epoch.
