arXiv · 2508.14304
Spatially Resolved [O III] Emission Line Kinematics of Reverberation-Mapped AGNs with the Keck Cosmic Web Imager
Abstract
We present optical integral-field spectroscopic data of ten nearby ($0.02\leq z \leq 0.05$) Seyfert 1 galaxies taken with the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI). We map the spatially resolved kinematics of the [O III] gas and stars, and investigate the alignments between their global kinematic position angles (PA). Large-scale gas motions are primarily dominated by rotation, and are kinematically aligned with the stars ($\Delta\text{PA}\leq 30$ deg). However, eight galaxies exhibit non-rotational kinematic signatures (e.g., kinematic twists, possible outflows) in their ionized gas velocity fields near the nucleus. We compare aperture-wide measurements of the gas and stellar velocity dispersions ($\sigma_{\text{gas}}$ and $\sigma_\star$) to test the use of the width of the [O III] line core as a surrogate for $\sigma_\star$. Direct comparisons between $\sigma_{\text{gas}}$ and $\sigma_\star$ show that $\sigma_{\text{gas}}$ tends to underestimate $\sigma_\star$, and thus is not a reliable tracer of $\sigma_\star$ for our selected galaxies. We measure the extent of the narrow-line region (NLR) using several definitions, resulting in sizes of $\sim0.1$-$10$ kpc. For a given [O III] luminosity, our NLR sizes derived from the [O III]/H$\beta$ flux ratio or an [O III] isophotal radius are an order of magnitude larger than those measured from past imaging data.
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Raymond P. Remigio, Vivian U, Aaron J. Barth, Nico Winkel, Vardha N. Bennert, Tommaso Treu, Matthew A. Malkan, Sebastian Contreras, Peter R. Williams, Jordan N. Runco, Liam Hunt. 2025-08-19. Spatially Resolved [O III] Emission Line Kinematics of Reverberation-Mapped AGNs with the Keck Cosmic Web Imager. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Fadfe5d
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