Title: Probing the Origin of Supermassive Black Holes with Dwarf Galaxies
Abstract:
Supermassive black holes (BHs) live at the heart of essentially all massive galaxies with bulges, power AGNs, and are thought to be important agents in the evolution of their hosts. However, the origin of the first supermassive BH seeds in the early Universe is far from understood. I will discuss efforts to search for and study the smallest BHs in present-day dwarf galaxies, which are beginning to provide the much needed observational constraints on the masses, host galaxies, and formation path of supermassive BH seeds. I will also present new results on the local relation between BH mass and host galaxy mass, which has important implications for direct observations of high-redshift BHs.