4 AGN optical spectra

While >~100 IMBH and small SMBH candidates have been identified in recent years, few have been robustly confirmed to date, leaving their number density in considerable doubt. Placing firmer constraints both on the methods used to identify and confirm IMBHs/SMBHs, as well as characterizing the range of host environments that IMBHs/SMBHs likely inhabit is therefore of considerable interest and importance.

Additionally, finding significant numbers of IMBHs in metal-poor systems would be particularly intriguing, since such systems may represent local analogs of primordial galaxies, and therefore could provide clues of early accretion processes. Here we study in detail several candidate Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) found in metal-poor hosts. We utilize new X-ray and optical observations to characterize these metal-poor AGN candidates and compare them against known AGN luminosity relations and well-characterized IMBH/SMBH samples.