SO Webloquio: Dwarf Galaxies and the Smallest Supermassive Black Holes

Despite traditional thinking, an appreciable population of (relatively small) supermassive black holes may be lurking in dwarf galaxies. Before the last decade, nearly all known supermassive black holes were in the nuclei of giant galaxies and the existence of such black holes in dwarf galaxies was highly controversial. The field has now been transformed, with a growing community of researchers working on a variety of observational studies and theoretical models of dwarf galaxies hosting supermassive black holes. Work in this area not only is important for a holistic understanding of dwarf galaxy evolution and feedback, but may also just tell us how the first ‘seeds’ of supermassive black holes formed in the early Universe. In this talk, I will highlight some of my work in this field that has taken us from a few rare examples to large systematically assembled samples of dwarf galaxies hosting the smallest known supermassive black holes.