Nearby Galaxy Mergers Seen with Adaptive Optics: A Sharper Image

If most galaxies have massive black holes in their nuclei, an important question to ask is "what happens to those black holes if two galaxies merge together?" With the technology of laser guide star adaptive optics, we have been studying the positions, masses, and outflows of supermassive black holes in merging URLIRG galaxies. I will report on results suggesting how the M-sigma relation establishes itself following the merger of massive gas-rich galaxies.