Program: GN-2015B-Q-80

Leveraging the wealth of multi-wavelength data within the wide-area X-ray survey in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 region ("Stripe 82X"), we identified a class of objects that are ideal candidates for luminous obscured supermassive black hole growth at z>1. The X-ray emission from these objects indicate that they are accreting black holes, while their lack of optical emission in tandem with their infrared colors suggest that they are heavily obscured systems at cosmological distances. This population may represent a critical phase in AGN evolution, where the largest fraction of supermassiave black hole growth potentially occurs. With the proposed program, we will obtain spectroscopic redshifts for these objects, thereby confirming the sources as AGN while determining their distances and luminosities. We will also calculate black hole masses for AGN that have broad emission lines. In addition to recovering obscured AGN missed by optical surveys, these objects could potentially re-define the bright end of the quasar luminosity function.