Stellar kinematics in the nuclear regions of nearby LIRGs with
  VLT-SINFONI. Comparison with gas phases and implications for dynamical mass
  estimations
  In this work we use seeing-limited SINFONI H- and K-band spectroscopy to
analyse the spatially resolved kinematics of the stellar component in the inner
r<1-2 kpc of ten nearby (mean z=0.014) LIRGs. We compare the stellar kinematics
with those for different gas phases, and analyse the relative effects of using
different tracers when estimating dynamical masses. The stellar velocity and
velocity dispersion maps are extracted in both near-IR bands by fitting the
continuum emission using pPXF while we use the gas kinematics from previous
works. We find that the different gas phases have similar kinematics, whereas
the stellar component is rotating with slightly lower velocities
(V$_*$~0.8V$_g$) but in significantly warmer orbits ($\sigma_*$~2$\sigma_g$)
than the gas phases. These values indicate that stars are rotating in thick
discs while the gas phases are confined in dynamically cooler rotating discs.
However, these differences do not lead to significant discrepancies between the
dynamical mass estimations based on the stellar and gas kinematics. This result
suggests that the gas kinematics can be used to estimate M$_{dyn}$ also in z~2
SFGs, a galaxy population that shares many structural and kinematic properties
with local LIRGs.
