Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-9-2016

Publication Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Department

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

We present a sample of accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in dwarf galaxies at z\lt 1. We identify dwarf galaxies in the NEWFIRM Medium Band Survey with stellar masses of {M}\star \lt 3× {10}9 {M} that have spectroscopic redshifts from the DEEP2 survey and lie within the region covered by deep (flux limit of ˜ 5× {10}-17{--}6× {10}-16 {erg} {{cm}}-2 {{{s}}}-1) archival Chandra X-ray data. From our sample of 605 dwarf galaxies, 10 exhibit X-ray emission consistent with that arising from active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity. If black-hole mass scales roughly with stellar mass, then we expect that these AGNs are powered by SMBHs with masses of ˜ {10}5{--}{10}6 {M} and typical Eddington ratios of ˜ 5 % . Furthermore, we find an AGN fraction consistent with extrapolations of other searches of ˜ 0.6 % {--}3 % for {10}9 {M}≤slant {M}\star ≤slant 3× {10}9 {M} and 0.1\lt z\lt 0.6. Our AGN fraction is in good agreement with a semi-analytic model, suggesting that, as we search larger volumes, we may use comparisons between observed AGN fractions and models to understand seeding mechanisms in the early universe.

DOI

10.3847/0004-637X/831/2/203

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