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An upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in dust from ALMA observations in 60 Little Red Dots

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arxiv 2505.18873 v1 pith:MKSB3UCU submitted 2025-05-24 astro-ph.GA

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords dustlrdscompactlimitodotalmaappreciabledots
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abstract

By virtue of their red color, the dust in little red dots (LRDs) has been thought to be of appreciable influence, whether that dust is distributed in a torus around a compact active galactic nucleus (AGN) or diffuse in the interstellar medium (ISM) of nascent galaxies. In Casey et al. (2024) we predicted that, based on the compact sizes of LRDs (unresolved in JWST NIRCam imaging), detection of an appreciable dust mass would be unlikely. Here we present follow-up ALMA 1.3mm continuum observations of a sample of 60 LRDs drawn from Akins et al. (2024). None of the 60 LRDs are detected in imaging that reaches an average depth of $\sigma_{rms}=22\,\mu Jy$. A stack of the 60 LRDs also results in a non-detection, with an inverse-variance weighted flux density measurement of $S_{1.3mm}=2.1\pm2.9\,\mu Jy$. This observed limit translates to a 3$\sigma$ upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in LRDs' dust mass, and $\lesssim10^{11}$ L$_\odot$ in total dust luminosity; both are a factor of 10$\times$ deeper than previous submm stack limits for LRDs. These results are consistent with either the interpretation that LRDs are reddened due to compact but modest dust reservoirs (with $A_{V}\sim2-4$) or, alternatively, that instead of being reddened by dust, they have extreme Balmer breaks generated by dense gas ($>10^{9}\,cm^{-3}$) enshrouding a central black hole.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. What you see is what you get: empirically measured bolometric luminosities of Little Red Dots

    astro-ph.GA 2025-09 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Directly integrating the observed spectra of two Little Red Dots shows the bolometric luminosity is dominated by rest-frame optical light, lowering implied black hole masses to about 10^5 to 10^7 solar masses.

  2. ATLAS. II. Extremely High Incidence of Balmer Line Absorption with Predominant Blueshifts in LRDs: Statistical Insights through Comparison with Type 1 AGNs

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Balmer-line absorption occurs in ~35% (14/40) of JWST little-red-dot AGNs, roughly 850x the rate in SDSS type-1 AGNs, with mostly slow blueshifted absorber velocities.

  3. Investigating Little Red Dots with UV Excess: Are They the High-Redshift Siblings of Blue Hot DOGs?

    astro-ph.GA 2025-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Little Red Dots are not the high-redshift relatives of Blue-excess Hot DOGs; they have less dust obscuration, little hot dust, and likely a different power source.

  4. MEGA: Spectrophotometric SED Fitting of Little Red Dots Detected in JWST MIRI

    astro-ph.GA 2025-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Standard AGN and star-forming templates cannot fully reproduce the SEDs of eight MIRI-detected little red dots; dense-gas models plus extra hot dust partly work but fail on UV and narrow emission lines.

  5. Beneath the Surface: >85% of z>5.9 QSOs in Massive Host Galaxies are UV-Faint

    astro-ph.GA 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    More than 85% of z>5.9 quasars in massive host galaxies are UV-faint, indicating that UV-bright quasars are extreme outliers in black hole mass.

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