The Relation between Nuclear Activity and Stellar Mass in Galaxies
  The existence of correlations between nuclear properties of galaxies, such as
the mass of their central black holes, and larger scale features, like the
bulge mass and luminosity, represent a fundamental constraint on galaxy
evolution. Although the actual reasons for these relations have not yet been
identified, it is widely believed that they could stem from a connection
between the processes that lead to black hole growth and stellar mass assembly.
The problem of understanding how the processes of nuclear activity and star
formation can affect each other became known to the literature as the
Starburst-AGN connection. Despite years of investigation, the physical
mechanisms which lie at the basis of this relation are known only in part. In
this work, we analyze the problem of star formation and nuclear activity in a
large sample of galaxies. We study the relations between the properties of the
nuclear environments and of their host galaxies. We find that the mass of the
stellar component within the galaxies of our sample is a critical parameter,
that we have to consider in an evolutionary sequence, which provides further
insight in the connection between AGN and star formation processes.
