Hunting for Infrared Signatures of Supermassive Black Hole Activity in Dwarf Galaxies

Dataset

Description

In order to explore the origin of the relationship between the growth of a galaxy and its central supermassive black hole, evidence must be found for black holes in galaxies at a wide range in masses. Searching for supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies is especially important as these objects have less complicated merger histories, and they may host black holes that are similar to early proposed ``seed'' black holes. However, this selection is complicated by the fact that star formation in these dwarf galaxies can often mask the optical signatures of supermassive black hole growth and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity in these objects. The all-sky infrared coverage offered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has been used to great success to select AGNs in more massive galaxies, but great care must be used when using infrared selection techniques on samples of dwarf galaxies. In particular, compact, highly star-forming dwarf galaxies can have infrared colors that may lead them to be erroneously selected as AGNs. In this talk, I will discuss recent work exploring infrared selection of AGN candidates in dwarf galaxies, and present a set of potential IR dwarf-galaxy AGN candidates. I will also outline the importance in these results with respect to future selection of AGNs in low-metallicity galaxies at high-redshift.
Date made availableAug 18 2016
PublisherZENODO

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