Wandering Black Hole Candidates in Dwarf Galaxies at VLBI Resolution

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution VLBA observations to investigate radio sources in dwarf galaxies, aiming to identify wandering massive black holes and distinguish them from background AGNs.

Contribution

It provides the first milliarcsecond-scale radio imaging of these candidates, revealing that some are likely background AGNs while others may host wandering black holes.

Findings

Detected compact radio sources in 4 out of 13 galaxies.

Most sources are consistent with background AGNs based on their location.

Between 5 and 7 galaxies may host wandering black holes.

Abstract

Thirteen dwarf galaxies have recently been found to host radio-selected accreting massive black hole (MBH) candidates, some of which are ``wandering" in the outskirts of their hosts. We present 9 GHz Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of these sources at milliarcsecond resolution. Our observations have beam solid angles ${\sim}10^4$ times smaller than the previous Very Large Array (VLA) observations at 9 GHz, with comparable point source sensitivities. We detect milliarcsecond-scale radio sources at the positions of the four VLA sources most distant from the photo-centers of their associated dwarf galaxies. These sources have brightness temperatures of ${>}10^6~\mathrm{K}$, consistent with active galactic nuclei (AGNs), but the significance of their preferential location at large distances ($p$-value~$=0.0014$) favors a background AGN interpretation. The VLBA non-detections toward the other 9 galaxies indicate that the VLA sources are resolved out on scales of tens of milliarcseconds, requiring extended radio emission and lower brightness temperatures consistent with either star formation or radio lobes associated with AGN activity. We explore the star formation explanation by calculating the expected radio emission for these nine VLBA non-detections, finding that about 5 have VLA luminosities that are inconsistent with this scenario. Of the remaining four, two are associated with spectroscopically confirmed AGNs that are consistent with being located at their galaxy photo-centers. There are therefore between 5 and 7 wandering MBH candidates out of the 13 galaxies we observed, although we cannot rule out background AGNs for five of them with the data in hand.