Exploring the observed properties of JWST Little Red Dots with cosmological simulations and dust radiative transfer

arXiv:2609.34903 · astro-ph.GA · Submitted 2026-09-28 · Read on arXiv

astro-ph.GA

Submitted: 2026-09-28

Updated: 2026-09-28

Comments: 24 pages, 14 figures (11 main text, 3 appendix). Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• AGN — 133× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Aperture — 17× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Metallicity — 8× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Little Red Dots — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• AGN Feedback — 5× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Abundance — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Dust Attenuation — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Stellar Feedback — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Encircled Energy — 3× in this paper
• Consistency — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Core — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• James Webb Space Telescope — 2× in this paper
• Population Synthesis — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Calibration — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Initial Mass Function (IMF) — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• LRD and Little Blue Dot — 1× in this paper
• Little Red Dots (LRDs) — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Small Magellanic Cloud — 1× in this paper
• Trace — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• V21 with Radiative Transfer — 1× in this paper
• Velocity Dispersion — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• Do little red dots really form a distinct class of astronomical objects?
• Overmassive black holes and little red dots naturally form in simulations
• Little Red Dots host Black Hole Stars: A unified family of gas-reddened AGN revealed by JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy
• Irony at z=6.68: a bright AGN with forbidden Fe emission and multi-component Balmer absorption
• Overview of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES)
• A Rapid Evolution in the Observed Mbh/M* Relation at z > 3 Revealed via Spectro-photometric SED-Modeling
• A Critical Evaluation of the Physical Nature of the Little Red Dots
• Little Red Dots at z~2 in EIGER reveal a gentle decline with respect to their peak number density at z~5
• An unambiguous AGN and a Balmer break in an Ultraluminous Little Red Dot at z=4.47 from Ultradeep UNCOVER and All the Little Things Spectroscopy
• (LRDs)$^2$: The Low-ReDshift Little Red Dots Survey. II. DESI DR1 Sample
• Little Red Dots as Obscured Little Blue Dots: A Super-Eddington Unification Model
• The Engine and its Flows: Little Red Dot spectra are shaped by the column densities of their gas envelopes
• The metallicities of little red dot host galaxies: LRDs are metal poor, but not pristine
• Evidence of violation of Case B recombination in Little Red Dots
• The Little Red Dots Are Direct Collapse Black Holes
• Little Red Dots: One Photometric Tag Concealing Diverse Spectroscopic Flavors of Massive Star Formation and Black Hole Activity
• The Way We Tally Becomes the Tale: the Impact of Selection Strategies on the Inferred Evolution of Little Red Dots Across Cosmic Time
• Little Red and Blue Dots: simply stratified Broad Line Regions
• Hidden in Pixels. I. Discovery of dual "little red dots" indicates excess clustering on kilo-parsec scales

Related papers

• Apparent Stability in Self-Gravitating Turbulence and the Evolution of Molecular Clouds
• Two sets of potential-density basis pairs for the study of radial perturbations in collisionless spherical stellar systems
• Constraining reionization-era Ly alpha escape with JELS-MUSE: a highly complete H alpha-selected sample at z about6.1
• Deriving volume density profiles of filaments from observed surface densities
• Little Red Dots and Supermassive Black Hole Seed Formation in Ultralight Dark Matter Halos
• MEGATRON: how the first stars can create an iron metallicity plateau in the smallest dwarf galaxies