Little Red Dots are Tidal Disruption Events in Runaway-Collapsing Clusters

Abstract

I hypothesize a physical explanation for the "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The first star formation in the universe occurs in dense clusters, some of which may undergo runaway collapse and form an intermediate mass black hole. This process would appear as a very dense stellar system, with recurring tidal disruption events (TDEs) as stellar material is accreted by the black hole. Such a system would be compact, UV-emitting, and exhibit broad H-alpha emission. If runaway collapse is the primary mechanism for forming massive black hole seeds, this process could be fairly common and explain the large volume densities of LRDs. In order to match the predicted number density of runaway collapse clusters, the tidal disruption rate must be on the order of 10^-4 per year. A top-heavy stellar initial mass function may be required to match observations without exceeding the predicted LambdaCDM mass function. The TDE LRD hypothesis can be verified with followup JWST observations looking for TDE-like variability.

5 pages, 2 figures, replaced with version accepted to ApJL

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• A remarkable Ruby: Absorption in dense gas, rather than evolved stars, drives the extreme Balmer break of a Little Red Dot at $z=3.5$
• Little Red Dots Are Nurseries of Massive Black Holes
• Where Have All the Little Red Dots Gone? Supermassive Black Hole Binary Dynamics and its Impact on Galaxy Properties
• Toward Black Hole Stars: supermassive black hole growth in nuclear clusters via stellar-object and gas accretion
• What Do Radio Emission Constraints Tell Us About Little Red Dots as Tidal Disruption Events?
• The Nuclear Star Cluster of M 74: a fossil record of the very early stages of a star-forming galaxy