Hidden in Pixels. I. Discovery of dual "little red dots" indicates excess clustering on kilo-parsec scales
astro-ph.GA
Submitted: 2024-12-18
Updated: 2026-09-07
Comments: 21 pages, 11 figures, and 3 tables
DOI: 10.1093/pasj/psag092
Code: https://github.com/gbrammer/grizli
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: ``Little Red Dots'' (LRDs) are an abundant high-redshift population newly discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and considered to be an early growth phase of supermassive black holes
Terminology
Abstract
``Little Red Dots'' (LRDs) are an abundant high-redshift population newly discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and considered to be an early growth phase of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Using a method of pixel-by-pixel color selection and relaxing the compactness criteria, we identify four dual LRD candidates in the COSMOS-Web survey with projected separations of 0.!!2 - 1.!!2. A comparison between existing LRD samples and mock data reveals that the projected separations of these dual LRD candidates are unlikely to result from chance projections of objects at different redshifts. Furthermore, two of the four systems are covered by COSMOS-3D slitless spectroscopy, and a single-line detection at the same observed wavelength for each LRD in a pair strongly supports that they are at identical redshifts. Assuming that the detected lines are H α based on their high equivalent width and broad profile, the spectroscopic redshifts of z=5.822 and 5.464 for the two pairs are consistent with their photometric redshifts, yielding projected separations of 1.64 and 7.36, kpc. These discoveries suggest that the angular auto-correlation function (ACF) of LRDs exhibits an excess (about20 - 30 times) on sub-arcsec (kilo-parsec) separations compared to an extrapolation of a power-law ACF of JWST-found AGNs measured over 10 - 100. Our sample is likely to represent precursors of mergers between LRDs, and such mergers may be one of the mechanisms that can drive the rapid growth of SMBHs in their early evolutionary stages.
Sources
- Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
- Little Red Dots host Black Hole Stars: A unified family of gas-reddened AGN revealed by JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy
- COSMOS-Web: Comprehensive Data Reduction for Wide-Area JWST NIRCam Imaging
- Spectral Uniformity of Little Red Dots: A Natural Outcome of Coevolving Seed Black Holes and Nascent Starbursts
- The Emergence of Little Red Dots from Binary Massive Black Holes
- A direct black hole mass measurement in a Little Red Dot at the Epoch of Reionization
- The case for super-Eddington accretion in JWST broad-line AGN during the first billion years
- Counting Little Red Dots at $z<4$ with Ground-based Surveys and Spectroscopic Follow-up
- The radio properties of the JWST-discovered AGN
- UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction
- JWST COSMOS-3D: Spectroscopic Census and Luminosity Function of [O III] Emitters at 6.75<z<9.05 in COSMOS
- A "Black Hole Star" Reveals the Remarkable Gas-Enshrouded Hearts of the Little Red Dots
- DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision
- NEXUS: the North ecliptic pole EXtragalactic Unified Survey
- A Black-Hole Envelope Interpretation for Cosmological Demographics of Little Red Dots
- Water absorption confirms cool atmospheres in two little red dots
- VENUS: Two Faint Little Red Dots Separated by $\sim70\,\mathrm{pc}$ Hidden in a Single Lensed Galaxy at $z\sim7$
- Extended Components of Little Red Dots in the Rest-Frame Optical
- NEXUS: A Spectroscopic Census of Broad-line AGNs and Little Red Dots at $3\lesssim z\lesssim 6$
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