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A confirmed deficit of hot and cold dust emission in the most luminous Little Red Dots

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arxiv 2503.02059 v1 pith:5NR3EFTB submitted 2025-03-03 astro-ph.GA

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords dustlrdsemissioncolddustyimagingmathrmstarbursts
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abstract

Luminous broad H$\alpha$ emission and red rest-optical SEDs are the hallmark of compact Little Red Dots (LRDs), implying highly attenuated dusty starbursts and/or obscured active galactic nuclei. However, the lack of observed FIR emission has proved difficult to reconcile with the implied attenuated luminosity in these models. Here, we utilize deep new ALMA imaging, new and existing JWST/MIRI imaging, and archival Spitzer/Herschel imaging of two of the rest-optically brightest LRDs ($z=3.1$ and $z=4.47$) to place the strongest constraints on the IR luminosity in LRDs to date. The detections at $\lambda_\mathrm{rest}=1-4 \ \mu$m imply flat slopes in the rest-IR, ruling out a contribution from hot ($T\gtrsim500$ K) dust. Similarly, FIR non-detections rule out any appreciable cold ($T\lesssim75$ K) dust component. Assuming energy balance, these observations are inconsistent with the typical FIR dust emission of dusty starbursts and quasar torii, which usually show a mixture of cold and hot dust. Additionally, our [$\mathrm{C}_{II}$] non-detections rule out typical dusty starbursts. We compute empirical maximum IR SEDs and find that both LRDs must have $\log(L_\mathrm{IR}/L_\odot) \lesssim 12.2$ at the $3\sigma$ level. These limits are in tension with the predictions of rest-optical spectrophotometric fits, be they galaxy only, AGN only, or composite. It is unlikely that LRDs are highly dust-reddened intrinsically blue sources with a dust temperature distribution that conspires to avoid current observing facilities. Rather, we favor an intrinsically redder LRD SED model that alleviates the need for strong dust attenuation.

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Cited by 10 Pith papers

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

  1. Misaligned or chaotic? A strong break of axial symmetry in the local LRD J1025 revealed with VLT/FORS2 spectropolarimetry

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 accept novelty 7.0 of 10

    The local Little Red Dot J1025 shows a 48° polarisation-angle offset between continuum and broad H-alpha, requiring broken axial symmetry.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Reduced Incidence of Little Red Dots at z < 3 from Number Density and Halo Mass Evolution

    astro-ph.GA 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    LRDs transition from underdense low-halo-mass environments at z>4 to typical galaxy conditions by z~3.5, with halo growth leading to larger sizes and SED changes that explain their disappearance at lower redshifts.

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

    astro-ph.GA 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    JWST resolves A383-LRD1 into a compact red Little Red Dot candidate and a blue companion at z≈6, magnified ~9–16× by cluster lensing.

  6. Do Little Red Dots Vary?

    astro-ph.GA 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Super-Eddington accretion models can explain why little red dots show almost no variability, whereas standard sub-Eddington AGN variability models predict changes that should already have been seen.

  7. Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs). XXIV. 54 New Quasars and Candidate Obscured Quasars at $5.71 \le z \le 7.02$

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

    Spectroscopic follow-up of the completed HSC-SSP survey yields 43 new quasars, 11 candidate obscured quasars, and 29 galaxies at z 5.71 to 7.02.

  8. 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.

  9. Evidence of violation of Case B recombination in Little Red Dots

    astro-ph.GA 2025-10 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    In one of seven Little Red Dots, the broad Hδ/Hα ratio is more than 5σ below the Case B prediction, signalling a breakdown of standard recombination in very dense gas.

  10. Little Red reionization factories

    astro-ph.GA 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    LRDs may drive cosmic reionization: tidal fields are said to funnel intergalactic hydrogen into colliding streams at LRD sites, igniting starbursts that ionize the gas.

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