Program: GN-2008A-Q-8

This is a continuing project for which we propose to obtain GMOS IFU emission-line spectroscopy of the extended Halpha gas in the inner kiloparsec of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) hosts, selected for having dusty nuclear spirals, in order to test the hypothesis that these spirals trace the channels through which the nuclear supermassive black hole (SMBH) is being fed. This study is motivated by the results recently obtained by our group for two nearby galaxies with LINER nuclei: NGC1097 and NGC6951. In these galaxies, the Halpha kinematics within the inner kiloparsec, besides being dominated by circular motions in the galactic plane, shows streaming motions towards the nucleus with speeds of up to 50 km/s which approximately delineate dusty spiral arms observed in images of the nuclear region. We may have found the long sought feeding mechanism of AGN, but this result needs to be confirmed by the observation of a larger sample of AGN's, covering a range of activity types. As the next step at reaching this goal, in this particular proposal we propose to map the gas kinematics in the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC4501, a galaxy which also shows nuclear spirals, but which is somewhat more active than the LINERs so far observed.