Program: GS-2008A-Q-206

There is much evidence that galaxy interactions are an important factor in enhancing both star formation and nuclear activity in the participating objects, but there is still no clear agreement in the literature about the correlation between interaction and activity, or the final observational effects of the interaction in the kinematical or chemical distributions of the gas in the participating galaxies. It is known that the response of the gas to a close passage depends dramatically on the mass distribution of the galaxy, so we have started a programme of a more comprehensive study of the effects of the interactions in the kinematics, stellar population and chemical distribution of the so called "minor merger" systems (physical pairs with mass ratio in the range of 0.04 < M_secondary/M_primary < 0.3). Very little information exists on the individual systems targeted in this programme, and not much more on the more generic topic of individual, spatially resolved, star forming regions in minor mergers. We propose to use GMOS long slit spectroscopy to study (a) the kinematics of the individual galaxies and the dynamics of the system, (b) the stellar population distribution in each galaxy, and its possible relationship with the interaction as well as with the characteristics of the galaxy itself (mass), (c) the chemical distribution of the gas in each galaxy, and the effects of the interaction in both enrichment and mixing. Some of the data for this programme have already been obtained and we aim with this proposal to complete the datasets required to carry out the above listed goals for four interacting systems.