Supermassive Black Hole Growth During The Peak Of Cosmic Star Formation

Massive galaxies in the nearby universe all show evidence of a central Supermassive Black Hole. The black holes are seen to grow over time by accretion of gas from their host galaxy, a phenomenon referred to as an Active Galactic Nucleus. This process is believed to be fundamental to the observed correlations between black hole mass and properties of the host galaxies. We have a more limited and biased understanding of the growth of supermassive black holes in more 'typical' galaxies at z ∼ 1 -- 2. In this work, we search for Active Galactic Nuclei in a population of star-forming galaxies spanning a mass range of M* ∼ 107 -- 1012 M[special character omitted] at 0.62 < z < 2.39, during the peak of cosmic star formation and massive black hole growth. Our data are drawn from the WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallels (WISP) survey, for which we designed and implemented a suite of data analysis routines for discovering and measuring star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei. We find a sample of 50 active galactic nuclei, identified by their strong, rest-frame optical, emission-line ratios. We find that growing supermassive black holes in low-mass galaxies at z [special character omitted] 1 either make up a greater fraction of their galaxies' masses than those in massive galaxies, or perhaps emit a greater fraction of their energy in [O III].