The counter-rotating stellar component in the AGN galaxy IC5063

Counter-rotating stellar components provide a direct window into the assembly history of galaxies, tracing external accretion and past mergers. This thesis presents a dedicated kinematic study of the Seyfert galaxy IC 5063, focusing on the detection and characterization of its counter-rotating stellar populations. Using integral-field spectroscopic data, I developed a reduction and analysis workflow that includes spectral fitting, spatial binning, and decomposition of line-of-sight velocity distributions to isolate distinct stellar components. The methodology emphasizes careful treatment of instrumental resolution, masking, and uncertainty propagation to ensure robust kinematic maps. The results reveal two stellar disks rotating in opposite directions, whose relative luminosity fractions and velocity dispersions vary systematically across the galaxy. These findings demonstrate that IC 5063 hosts large-scale stellar counter-rotation, offering evidence for a significant external accretion event in its past. The analysis illustrates how spectral decomposition techniques can disentangle overlapping dynamical structures, advancing our understanding of the role of counter-rotation in shaping galaxy evolution.