The Search for Supermassive Black Holes in Surprisingly Small Packages with the James Webb Space Telescope

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous in the cores of all giant galaxies where searched, but technological limitations have precluded our understanding of their demographics in low-mass stellar systems like ultra-compact dwarf galaxies, nuclear star clusters, and compact elliptical galaxies. These systems have interconnected evolutionary histories, and the presence (or lack) of central black holes is an important ingredient in understanding their connections. The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has ushered in a new capability for studies in this area, and in this talk I will summarize one such effort. Specifically, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph's integral field unit is being used to study the stellar dynamics in the cores of 18 such low-mass systems to search for the dynamical influence of any central SMBHs. I will review the overall goals of the program and highlight some of the early results including a surprising discovery of a >100 million solar mass SMBH offset from the centre of the host galaxy. Detailed modelling suggests that this SMBH is a result of a recent merger of two SMBHs and is currently recoiling from the energetic merger, essentially "kicking" the SMBH out of the centre of the host. This would be only the second time such a scenario has ever been observed and offers a unique opportunity to study the effects SMBH mergers have on sculpting stellar orbits in the cores of their host galaxies.