Black Hole Feedback in Dwarf Galaxy Evolution.

In a scenario where all galaxies form and evolve with supermassive black holes in their centers, it is thought that these central black holes play a vital role in limiting the growth of massive galaxies. In order to extend our understanding of black hole influence on galaxy evolution into the low mass regime, we collected spatially resolved spectra of 50 nearby(z < 0.05) dwarf (M⋆ < 1010M⊙) galaxies, selected from SDSS DR7 and DR 8 followed-up with Keck/LRIS spectroscopy. We study the potential effects of active galactic nuclei (AGN) on galaxy-wide gas kinematics and integrated stellar properties by comparing measurements obtained from 29 galaxies containing AGN, and 21 control galaxies with no optical or infrared signs of AGN. We present the first direct measurements of AGN-driven gas outflows in the low mass regime. We also find a strong association between AGN and disturbed ionized gas kinematics and signs of star formation suppression. Our results provide evidence that AGN can have significant influence on large scale gas motions in their host galaxies and their global stellar populations. AGN feedback appears to be an important, and perhaps dominant, mechanism that regulates dwarf galaxy evolution, and should be included in realistic galaxy formation models in the low-mass regime.