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Intermediate-mass black holes in dwarf galaxies out to redshift ˜2.4 in the Chandra COSMOS-Legacy Survey

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Abstract

  • We present a sample of 40 active galactic nucleus (AGN) in dwarf galaxies at redshifts z &lsim; 2.4. The galaxies are drawn from the Chandra COSMOS-Legacy survey as having stellar masses 107 * 9 M&sun;. Most of the dwarf galaxies are star forming. After removing the contribution from star formation to the X-ray emission, the AGN luminosities of the 40 dwarf galaxies are in the range L0.5-10 keV &tilde; 1039-1044 erg s-1. With 12 sources at z > 0.5, our sample constitutes the highest-redshift discovery of AGN in dwarf galaxies. The record-holder is cid_1192, at z = 2.39 and with L0.5-10 keV &tilde; 1044 erg s-1. One of the dwarf galaxies has M* = 6.6 × 107 M&sun; and is the least massive galaxy found so far to host an AGN. All the AGN are of type 2 and consistent with hosting intermediate-mass black holes (BHs) with masses &tilde;104-105 M&sun; and typical Eddington ratios >1 per cent. We also study the evolution, corrected for completeness, of AGN fraction with stellar mass, X-ray luminosity, and redshift in dwarf galaxies out to z = 0.7. We find that the AGN fraction for 109 * 9 M&sun; and LX &tilde; 1041-1042 erg s-1 is &tilde;0.4 per cent for z <= 0.3 and that it decreases with X-ray luminosity and decreasing stellar mass. Unlike massive galaxies, the AGN fraction seems to decrease with redshift, suggesting that AGN in dwarf galaxies evolve differently than those in high-mass galaxies. Mindful of potential caveats, the results seem to favour a direct collapse formation mechanism for the seed BHs in the early Universe.

Publication Date

  • 2018

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