Program: GS-2007B-Q-10

We aim to determine the dynamics and stellar populations of a large sample of low redshift X-ray selected AGN which already have high resolution imaging data (HST). This proposal is to use GMOS to obtain spatially-resolved-spectroscopy of the host galaxies of two luminous AGN at z~0.1 Combined with data already obtained from other sources (AAT and VLT) this forms a sample of AGN covering a wide range in nuclear luminosities (-24<M(B)<-16). This data will enable us to: 1) detect evidence for recent mergers and measure the relative importance of merging vs. small-scale stochastic accretion as a function of luminosity, 2) determine the bulge velocity dispersion and black hole mass to measure the MBH-sigma relation in these sources, 3) determine the accretion efficiency based on a comparison to the nuclear luminosities at optical and X-ray wavelengths.