Program: GN-2020A-Q-233

The hunt for supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in local dwarf galaxies is crucial to our understanding of the origins of SMBHs . While recent studies have found optical signatures of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in a growing population of dwarf galaxies, these studies are biased toward redder bulge-dominated galaxies, where dilution from star formation is less significant, and galaxies with super-solar metallicity. This is a severe limitation, since the premise behind the use of dwarf galaxies to probe seed black holes rests on the assumption that they have had a quiescent cosmic history, free of external factors such as merging or tidal stirring, both of which would drive gas to the center, fueling star formation, enriching the gas, increasing the bulge to disk fraction, and potentially fueling the SMBH. Optical studies therefore favor the wrong demographic in which to hunt for the relics of SMBH seeds. In this study, we propose to observe with Gemini GNIRS a sample of the lowest metallicity galaxies with mid-infrared colors indicative of dominant AGNs based on stringent MIR selection criteria. If the AGNs are confirmed in these objects, this study will provide the lowest metallicity AGNs known in the local universe and provide the first evidence for AGNs in galaxies that are truly more representative of local analogs of early galaxies. The detection of coronal line emission by Gemini is the only way to confirm the presence of AGNs in this population and to constrain their properties.