Exploring X-Ray Properties of Low-metallicity Dwarf Galaxies

Abstract

One of the primary outstanding questions in extragalactic astronomy is the formation and early evolution of the supermassive black holes that are seen in nearly every massive galaxy. Low-metallicity dwarf galaxies may offer the most representative local analogs to pristine early galaxies, making them a vital tool in probing black hole seed models through the study of the intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) possibly hosted therein; though these dwarf galaxies, and the IMBHs they may host, are typically not as well-studied in this context as their higher-metallicity and higher-mass counterparts. In this paper, we explore the X-ray properties of a sample of 37 low-metallicity dwarf galaxies using archival XMM observations, and we compare the properties of this population against a representative sample of higher-metallicity counterparts. We report the detection of 10 sources with 0.3–10 keV luminosity in excess of 1040 erg s−1 within the low-metallicity sample, which we highlight for followup as potential IMBH candidates. Finally, we discuss the differing multiwavelength scaling relations (e.g., L X–L W2, L X–star formation rate) between the two galaxy populations, as well as the sample’s L X as a function of metallicity.