Discovery of Local Analogs to JWST's Little Red Dots

Lin, RQ; Zheng, ZY; Jiang, CY; Yuan, FT; Ho, LC; Wang, JX; Jiang, LH; Rhoads, JE; Malhotra, S; Barrientos, LF; Wold, I.; Infante, L.; Zhu, SR; Ji, X; Fu, XD

Abstract

Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a new class of high-redshift (high-z, z > 4) compact galaxies that are red in the rest-frame optical and blue in the rest-frame UV with V-shaped spectral energy distributions (SEDs), referred to as “little red dots” (LRDs). It is very likely that LRDs host obscured broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGNs). In the meanwhile, Green Pea galaxies (GPs), which are compact dwarf galaxies at low redshift, share various similar properties with high-redshift star-forming galaxies. Here, we aim to find the connection between the LRDs and GPs hosting broad-line AGNs (BLGPs). With a sample of 19 BLGPs obtained from our previous work, we further identify seven GPs with V-shaped rest-frame UV-to-optical SEDs that are likely local analogs to LRDs. These V-shaped BLGPs exhibit faint UV absolute magnitudes and sub-Eddington rates similar to those of LRDs. Three of them occupy a similar region to LRDs in the Baldwin-Philips-Terlevich diagram, suggesting they have similar ionization conditions and gas-phase metallicities to LRDs. These similarities suggest that V-shaped BLGPs can be taken as local analogs of high-redshift LRDs. In addition, most (16/19) BLGPs, including six V-shaped BLGPs, host overmassive black holes (BHs) above the local MBH-M* relation, making it the first sample of galaxies hosting overmassive BHs at z < 0.4. These findings will help us learn more about the formation and coevolution of early galaxies and BHs. © 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

Más información

Título según WOS: Discovery of Local Analogs to JWST's Little Red Dots
Título según SCOPUS: Discovery of Local Analogs to JWST’s Little Red Dots
Título de la Revista: Astrophysical Journal Letters
Volumen: 980
Número: 2
Editorial: American Astronomical Society
Fecha de publicación: 2025
Idioma: English
DOI:

10.3847/2041-8213/adaaf1

Notas: ISI, SCOPUS