Circumnuclear star-formation and AGN activity: Clues from surface
  brightness radial profile of PAHs and [SIV]
  We studied the circumnuclear MIR emission in a sample of 19 local active
galactic nuclei (AGN) with high spatial resolution spectra using T-ReCS
(Gemini) and CanariCam (GTC), together with IRS/Spitzer observations. We
measured the flux and the equivalent width for the 11.3 micron PAH feature and
the [SIV] line emission as a function of galactocentric distance. This allowed
to study the star formation (SF) at sub-kpc scales from the nucleus for a large
sample of nearby AGN. The [SIV] line emission could be tracing the AGN
radiation field within a few thousand times the sublimation radius (R_sub), but
it often peaks at distances greater than 1000 R_sub. One possibility is that
the SF is contributing to the [SIV] total flux. We found an 11.3 micron PAH
emission deficit within the inner few tens of parsecs from the AGN. This
deficit might be due to the destruction of the molecules responsible for this
feature or the lack of SF at these distances. We found a sensible agreement in
the expected shift of the relation of the AGN bolometric luminosity and the SF
rate. This indicates that numerical models attributing the link between AGN
activity and host galaxy growth to mergers are in agreement with our data, for
most inner galaxy parts.
