An Accreting Supermassive Black Hole Buried in a Faint Dwarf Galaxy

Abstract

In the last decade, there have been several discoveries of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in dwarf galaxies including an AGN in an ultracompact dwarf galaxy with a black hole mass >106M⊙. However, finding a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a dwarf low surface brightness (LSB) galaxy is rare. We report the discovery of a Seyfert type 2 class AGN that is associated with a nuclear SMBH of mass ∼6.5 × 106M⊙ in a dwarf LSB galaxy (μ0,r > 23.8 mag arcsec−2) that we denote by MJ0818+2257. The galaxy was previously thought to be an outlying emission blob around the large spiral galaxy LEDA 1678924. In our current analysis, which includes the detection of the optical counterpart of MJ0818+2257, we study its ionized gas kinematics and find that the dynamical mass within the ionized gas disk is ∼5.3 × 109M⊙. This is comparable to its stellar mass, which is ∼3 × 109M⊙, and suggests that MJ0818+2257 is moderately dark matter dominated within the stellar disk. The SMBH-mass-to-galaxy-stellar-mass ratio is MBH/M(*) > 0.022, which is high compared to disk galaxies. Our detection of an SMBH in a bulgeless LSB dwarf galaxy raises questions about the growth of SMBHs in low-luminosity galaxies and suggests the possibility of detecting heavy seed black holes from early epochs in LSB dwarf galaxies in the low-redshift Universe.