Jeremy Bradford edited Introduction.tex  over 9 years ago

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\section{Introduction}  Supermassive black holes (BHs) live at the heart of essentially all massive galaxies with bulges. BHs both power AGN and are thought to be important agents in the evolution of their hosts. Using optical spectroscopy from the SDSS, \textbf{we havesystematically  assembled the largest sample of low mass (dwarf) galaxies hosting massive BHs to date} (Reines et al. 2013). These dwarf galaxies have stellar masses comparable to the Magellanic Clouds ($M_{\rm stellar} ∼ 10^{8.5} − 10^{9.5} M_{\odot}$) and contain some of the least-massive BHs known in galaxy nuclei ($M_{\rm BH} ∼ 10^5 M_{\odot}$). \textbf{We propose new 21 cm neutral hydrogen (HI) emission observations to study the properties of the least-massive galaxies known to contain massive BHs}. These observations will enable us to investigate host galaxy properties by examining BH to HI scaling relations at the sparsely-populated low-mass end. We will compare the gas content, dynamical masses and scaling relations of our BH sample against an isolated dwarf control sample (Bradford et al, in prep.). The results of our study will provide vital information on the formation and evolution of the smallest galaxies hosting massive BHs as well as the effect of AGN feedback on the cold HI gas content of these low mass galaxies.