Lonely Little Red Dots: Challenges to the Active Galactic Nucleus Nature of Little Red Dots through Their Clustering and Spectral Energy Distributions

Abstract Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope reveal a previously unseen population of compact red objects, known as “little red dots” (LRDs). We study a new photometrically selected sample of 124 LRDs in the redshift range z ∼ 3–10 selected from Near Infrared Camera coverage of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), North Ecliptic Pole Time Domain Field (NEP-TDF), James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), and JEMS. For JADES, the NEP-TDF, and CEERS, we compare spectral energy distribution (SED) models with and without active galactic nucleus (AGN) components and analyze the impact of an AGN component on the goodness of fit using the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). We find that while the χ 2 of the majority of models containing AGN components is improved compared to models without AGN components, we show that the BIC suggests that models without AGN are a more appropriate fit to LRD SEDs, especially when MIRI data are available. We also measure LRD clustering in the CEERS field, JADES field, and NEP-TDF, where we compare the spatial distribution of LRDs and galaxies with Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests of equality of distribution. We find that the neighbourhood of LRDs tends to be less dense compared to galaxies at all selections and masses and at similar redshifts. We further measure upper limit estimates for the halo masses of LRDs using abundance matching. While the population of LRDs could be a mixture of several different inherent populations, as a whole, it does appear that these systems are mostly hosting compact galaxies or star clusters in formation.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Published
2025-08-19
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adf73d
Citations
11
Primary Topic
Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
13.11

Funders

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article

Lonely Little Red Dots: Challenges to the Active Galactic Nucleus Nature of Little Red Dots through Their Clustering and Spectral Energy Distributions

Jake Summers, Stephen M. Wilkins, Lukas J. Furtak, Peter Behroozi et al.
11 citations
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
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article

Lonely Little Red Dots: Challenges to the Active Galactic Nucleus Nature of Little Red Dots through Their Clustering and Spectral Energy Distributions

Jake Summers, Stephen M. Wilkins, Lukas J. Furtak, Peter Behroozi, Rogier A. Windhorst, Rolf A. Jansen, Norman A. Grogin, Nimish P. Hathi, Nathan Adams, Madeline A. Marshall, Thomas Harvey, Christopher J. Conselice, Seth H. Cohen, Anton M. Koekemoer, Rosalia O’Brien, Dan Coe, Michael J. Rutkowski, Simon P. Driver, Haojing Yan, Katherine Ormerod, Brenda Frye, Cheng Cheng, James Trussler, Nor Pirzkal, Duncan Austin, M. Polletta, Christopher N. A. Willmer, Adi Zitrin, A. S. G. Robotham, Lewi Westcott, Qiong Li, Leonardo Ferreira, Qiao Duan, María Carranza-Escudero
article en
11 citations

Abstract

Abstract Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope reveal a previously unseen population of compact red objects, known as “little red dots” (LRDs). We study a new photometrically selected sample of 124 LRDs in the redshift range z ∼ 3–10 selected from Near Infrared Camera coverage of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), North Ecliptic Pole Time Domain Field (NEP-TDF), James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), and JEMS. For JADES, the NEP-TDF, and CEERS, we compare spectral energy distribution (SED) models with and without active galactic nucleus (AGN) components and analyze the impact of an AGN component on the goodness of fit using the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). We find that while the χ 2 of the majority of models containing AGN components is improved compared to models without AGN components, we show that the BIC suggests that models without AGN are a more appropriate fit to LRD SEDs, especially when MIRI data are available. We also measure LRD clustering in the CEERS field, JADES field, and NEP-TDF, where we compare the spatial distribution of LRDs and galaxies with Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests of equality of distribution. We find that the neighbourhood of LRDs tends to be less dense compared to galaxies at all selections and masses and at similar redshifts. We further measure upper limit estimates for the halo masses of LRDs using abundance matching. While the population of LRDs could be a mixture of several different inherent populations, as a whole, it does appear that these systems are mostly hosting compact galaxies or star clusters in formation.

The Astrophysical Journal LettersVol. 989(2)
National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Space Telescope Science Institute, National Research Foundation, Danmarks Grundforskningsfond, United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, Goddard Space Flight Center, Science and Technology Facilities Council
Openalex Percentile: Top 1%
Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
13.11
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