AGN selection and demographics from SMILES

We report significant progress with JWST toward this goal from the Systematic Mid-infrared Instrument Legacy Extragalactic Survey (SMILES). Based on comprehensive spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis of 3273 MIRI-detected sources, we identify 217 AGN candidates over a survey area of ~34arcmin2, including a primary sample of 111 AGNs in normal massive galaxies (M*>10^9.5^M_{sun}_) at z~0-4, an extended sample of 86 AGN candidates in low-mass galaxies (M*<10^9.5^M_{sun}_), and a high-z sample of 20 AGN candidates at z~4-8.4.

Notably, about 80% of our MIRI-selected AGN candidates are new discoveries despite the extensive pre-JWST AGN searches. Even among the massive galaxies where the previous AGN search is believed to be thorough, 34% of the MIRI AGN identifications are new, highlighting the impact of obscuration on previous selections. By combining our results with the efforts at other wavelengths, we build the most complete AGN sample to date and examine the relative performance of different selection techniques.