Abstract

Dwarf galaxies are the most common systems in the Universe and therefore crucial to a holistic understanding of galaxy evolution; however, both current and next generation observations will remain strongly biased towards giant galaxies. This inhibits the ability to address fundamental questions spanning many fields in astronomy. In particular, the question of how giant galaxies form supermassive black holes is one in which dwarfs are well suited to answer. I will present state-of-the-art photoionization models tailored to finding accreting intermediate mass black holes in dwarf AGN, which are metal-poor and highly star forming. I will highlight optical diagnostics capable of identifying dwarf AGN at z~0, increasing the local dwarf AGN fraction up to 15x previous estimates. I will show that while X-ray binaries can masquerade as dwarf AGN, emission lines diagnostics detectable with JWST can effectively separate the two excitation mechanisms. Finally, I will also preview our next-generation photoionization models that incorporate complex topologies inferred on-the-fly with Bayesian analysis.