Program: GS-2011B-Q-23

We propose 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 is being fed. This is a continuing study for which we have already data for 5 LINERs, 3 Seyfert 2 and 3 Seyfert 1 galaxies. The data in hand show that the Halpha kinematics within the inner kiloparsec presents streaming motions towards the nucleus with speeds of the order of 50 km/s. This result suggests that dusty nuclear spirals do trace inflows, and we now aim at correlating the mass inflow rates with the strength (luminosity) of the nuclear activity, in order to characterize the black hole accretion and growth in a statistically significant sample of galaxies, spanning a range of nuclear power. We thus need to include in our sample a range of AGN luminosities and, towards this goal, we now propose to use Gemini/GMOS-IFU to map the gas kinematics in the nearby Seyfert galaxies NGC1386, NGC1566 and NGC7213. Part of this sample will also be proposed to ALMA (Cycle 0).