Unveiling a population of galaxies harboring low-mass black holes with X-rays

Understand

We report the discovery of three low-mass black hole candidates residing in the centers of low-mass galaxies at z<0.3 in the Chandra Deep Field - South Survey.

• These black holes are initially identified as candidate active galactic nuclei based on their X-ray emission in deep Chandra observations.
• Multi-wavelength observations are used to strengthen our claim that such emission is powered by an accreting supermassive black hole.
• While the X-ray luminosities are low at L_X ~ 10^40 erg s^-1 (and variable in one case), we argue that they are unlikely to be attributed to star formation based on H\alpha or UV-fluxes.