activity
20232026
most citedA remarkable Ruby: Absorption in dense gas, rather than evolved stars, drives the extreme Balmer break of a Little Red Dot at

71 citations · 244 across the 49 of their papers we have counts for

collaborators

51 papers

astro-ph.GA2026

Overmassive No More: The Case for Little Red Dots Hosting Black Hole Seeds as Massive as Single Supermassive Stars

Wendy Q. Sun, Rohan P. Naidu, Hanpu Liu +17

Little Red Dots (LRDs) display singular properties unlike any known class of AGN or galaxies, motivating novel mass estimators for their central engines. Inspired by their similari…

astro-ph.GA2026

The Ashes of Supermassive Stars: Globular Cluster-like Aluminum Enhancement in Little Red Dots

V. Kokorev, J. Chisholm, R. P. Naidu +16

The relative abundances of elements in galaxies serve as fossil records of the physical conditions and processes by which they were forged. While the Big Bang produced only the lig…

astro-ph.GA2026

The ionizing properties of JWST's compact broad-line emitters

Sara Mascia, Jorryt Matthee, Alberto Torralba +4

The recent JWST discovery of a numerous population of broad-line emitters (BLEs) at has reopened the question of whether sources other than faint galaxies contributed signifi…

astro-ph.GA2026

Spatial decomposition of Little Red Dots with JWST/NIRSpec IFU into broad-line red cores and narrow-line blue host galaxies

Yuzo Ishikawa, Anna-Christina Eilers, Rohan P. Naidu +11

Little Red Dots (LRDs) are a population of compact red sources discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Imaging and spectroscopy have shown that LRDs exhibit a complex…

astro-ph.GA2026

Little Red Dots at z~2 in EIGER reveal a gentle decline with respect to their peak number density at z~5

Shrriya Kapoor, Jorryt Matthee, Alberto Torralba +10

We report the discovery of a sample of little red dots (LRDs) at identified from deep JWST/NIRCam imaging and wide-field slitless spectroscopy over arcmin f…

astro-ph.GA2026

The MASSIVE SURVEY XXI: Local Variations in the Stellar Initial Mass Function of MASSIVE Early-Type Galaxies

Meng Gu, Jenny E. Greene, Andrew B. Newman +2

Extensive evidence suggests that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies among early-type galaxies (ETGs), but spatially resolved studies within individual galaxies are limi…

astro-ph.GA2026

Constraints on the Gas Geometry Surrounding Little Red Dots through Narrow-Line Diagnostics

Visal Sok, Erica J. Nelson, Mitchell C. Begelman +10

Little Red Dots (LRDs) are a recently identified population of high-redshift sources, with a common interpretation being accreting black holes embedded within a spherical, opticall…

astro-ph.GA2026

Extended [CII] gas emission in and around a massive quiescent galaxy at z=7.3

F. Valentino, A. Pensabene, A. Weibel +16

We report the discovery of [CII] 158 micron emission in and around the most distant known massive quiescent galaxy RUBIES-UDS-QG-z7 at z = 7.27. Observed with ALMA in band 6, the […

astro-ph.GA2026

Black Hole Stars Across the Universe: Identifying Central Engine Dominated Little Red Dots at

Andrea Weibel, Rohan P. Naidu, Pascal A. Oesch +16

Photometric selections of Little Red Dots (LRDs) largely rely on identifying their ``V-shaped'' spectral energy distribution (SED). Recent work suggests this V-shape stems from a c…

astro-ph.GA2026

(LRDs): The Low-ReDshift Little Red Dots Survey. II. DESI DR1 Sample

Xiaojing Lin, Xiaohui Fan, Zheng Cai +12

JWST has revealed a substantial population of "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) at , challenging conventional AGN frameworks. However, the low-redshift regime remains largely unexplore…

astro-ph.GA2026★ 1 cited

The Engine and its Flows: Little Red Dot spectra are shaped by the column densities of their gas envelopes

Jorryt Matthee, Alberto Torralba, Gabriele Pezzulli +23

JWST data have enabled the abundant identification of compact broad Balmer line sources nicknamed the Little Red Dots. While they share broad lines with active galactic nuclei, the…

astro-ph.GA2026

A Black Hole Star at Cosmic Noon: Extreme Balmer break, photospheric continuum, and broad absorption by thick winds in a Little Red Dot at z=1.7

Alberto Torralba, Jorryt Matthee, Andrea Weibel +12

Recent studies at high redshift have revealed an enigmatic class of Little Red Dots (LRDs) with extreme Balmer breaks, stronger than in any stellar atmosphere. However, it is uncle…

astro-ph.GA2026

Synthetic Spectral Library of Optically Thick Atmospheres for Little Red Dots

Hanpu Liu, Yan-Fei Jiang, Eliot Quataert +3

Little Red Dots (LRDs) challenge conventional models of active galactic nuclei. At rest-optical-to-near-infrared (IR) wavelengths, these compact extragalactic objects show blackbod…

astro-ph.GA2026

Water absorption confirms cool atmospheres in two little red dots

Bingjie Wang, Joel Leja, Ivo Labbe +35

Little red dots (LRDs) are an abundant population of compact high-redshift sources with red rest-frame optical continua, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Their…

astro-ph.HE2026

Spectral Appearance of Self-gravitating Disks Powered by Stellar Objects: Universal Effective Temperature in the Optical Continuum and Application to Little Red Dots

Yi-Xian Chen, Hanpu Liu, Ruancun Li +6

We revisit the spectral appearance of extended self-gravitating accretion disks surrounding compact central objects such as supermassive black holes. Using dust-poor opacities, we…

astro-ph.GA2026

It's More Complicated Than You Think: A Forward Model to Infer the Recent Star Formation History, Bursty or Not, of Galaxy Populations

Emilie Burnham, Bingjie Wang, Joel Leja +14

Observations of the early Universe (z > 4) with the James Webb Space Telescope reveal galaxy populations with a wide range of intrinsic luminosities and colors. Bursty star formati…

astro-ph.GA2026

The X-Ray Dot: Exotic Dust or a Late-Stage Little Red Dot?

Raphael E. Hviding, Anna de Graaff, Hanpu Liu +15

JWST's "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) are increasingly interpreted as active galactic nuclei (AGN) obscured by dense thermalized gas rather than dust as evidenced by their X-ray weakness…

astro-ph.GA2026★ 5 cited

Little Red Dot Host Galaxy Black Hole Star: A Gas-Enshrouded Heart at the Center of Every Little Red Dot

Wendy Q. Sun, Rohan P. Naidu, Jorryt Matthee +30

The central engines of Little Red Dots (LRDs) may be ``black hole stars" (BH*s), early stages of black hole growth characterized by dense gas envelopes. So far, the most direct evi…

astro-ph.GA2025★ 2 cited

VENUS: When Red meets Blue -- A multiply imaged Little Red Dot with an apparent blue companion behind the galaxy cluster Abell 383

Miriam Golubchik, Lukas J. Furtak, Joseph F. V. Allingham +50

We report the discovery of a doubly-imaged Little Red Dot (LRD) candidate behind the galaxy cluster Abell 383, which we dub A383-LRD1. Initially classified as a dropout galaxy in H…

astro-ph.GA2025★ 2 cited

Little Red Dots host Black Hole Stars: A unified family of gas-reddened AGN revealed by JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy

Anna de Graaff, Raphael E. Hviding, Rohan P. Naidu +34

We use the DAWN JWST Archive to construct and characterise a sample of 146 little red dots (LRDs) across 2.0<z<9.3, selecting all sources with v-shaped UV-optical continua from NIR…

astro-ph.GA2025

A GLIMPSE of Intermediate Mass Black holes in the epoch of reionization: Witnessing the Descendants of Direct Collapse?

Qinyue Fei, Seiji Fujimoto, Rohan P. Naidu +17

JWST has revealed an abundance of supermassive black holes (BHs) in the early Universe, and yet the lowest mass seed black holes that gave rise to these populations remain elusive.…

astro-ph.GA2025★ 14 cited

The warm outer layer of a Little Red Dot as the source of [Fe II] and collisional Balmer lines with scattering wings

Alberto Torralba, Jorryt Matthee, Gabriele Pezzulli +22

The population of the Little Red Dots (LRDs) may represent a key phase of supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth. A cocoon of dense excited gas is emerging as key component to expla…

astro-ph.GA2025★ 5 cited

Irony at z=6.68: a bright AGN with forbidden Fe emission and multi-component Balmer absorption

Francesco D'Eugenio, Erica Nelson, Xihan Ji +11

We present the deepest medium-resolution JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy to date of a bright Little Red Dot (LRD) AGN, Irony at z=6.68. The data reveal broad Balmer emission from H-H$…

astro-ph.GA2025★ 2 cited

Meet the Neighbors: Gas Rich "Buddy Galaxies" are Common Around Recently Quenched Massive Galaxies in the SQuIGGE Survey

Anika Kumar, David J. Setton, Rachel Bezanson +7

In this work, we characterize the environments of massive () post-starburst galaxies (PSBs) by studying serendipitously-detected CO(2-1) e…