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Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

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Chapter 1<br />

Introduction<br />

The relationship between quiescent <strong>and</strong> active early type galaxies bears on our un-<br />

derst<strong>and</strong><strong>in</strong>g of black holes <strong>and</strong> their role <strong>in</strong> the active nuclei of galaxies, <strong>and</strong> on the<br />

evolution of galactic nuclei along with their host galaxies. <strong>Nearby</strong> early-type galaxies<br />

with radio jets provide an opportunity to ga<strong>in</strong> an underst<strong>and</strong><strong>in</strong>g of the conditions <strong>in</strong><br />

a galaxy which lead to the formation of a radio-active nucleus <strong>and</strong> of the physics of<br />

the regions which harbor the black hole <strong>and</strong> jet-formation regimes.<br />

In this dissertation, we present a detailed analysis of the k<strong>in</strong>ematics of the emission<br />

l<strong>in</strong>e gas <strong>in</strong> the nuclei of a complete sample of nearby, radio galaxies. This forms a<br />

part of a larger, coord<strong>in</strong>ated, multi-wavelength study of the same sample, which is<br />

described <strong>in</strong> the next chapter.<br />

1

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