Spatially Resolved [O III] Kinematics of Nearby Active Galaxies

One method of probing the co-evolution between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies is investigating the properties of gas photoionized by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). At optical wavelengths, the [O III] 5007 emission line serves as one of the best tracers of AGN activity since it is a strong, ubiquitous line that can be measured out to high redshifts. Additionally, the [O III] line profile often exhibits asymmetries, which are indicative of non-gravitational kinematics, such as AGN-driven outflows.

In this project, we reduced and analyzed integral-field data from the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) on the Keck-II telescope and mapped the spatially resolved stellar and ionized gas kinematics for a sample of ten nearby active galaxies. Comparing the kinematics of the stars and the [O III] gas, we found that for this sample of galaxies, deviations from disk rotation in the ionized gas velocity fields were localized to regions close to the nucleus.