A big red dot at cosmic noon
Federica Loiacono, Roberto Gilli, Marco Mignoli, Giovanni Mazzolari, Roberto Decarli, Marcella Brusa, Francesco Calura, Marco Chiaberge, Andrea Comastri, Quirino D'Amato, Kazushi Iwasawa, Ignas Juod\v{z}balis, Giorgio Lanzuisi, Roberto Maiolino, Stefano Marchesi, Colin Norman

TL;DR
This paper reports the discovery and analysis of a new type of luminous red object at cosmic noon, revealing insights into black hole growth and the prevalence of gas outflows in early universe active galactic nuclei.
Contribution
It introduces the first detailed study of a little red dot (LRD) at z=2.33, showing its properties, outflows, and implications for black hole seed formation during cosmic noon.
Findings
LRDs are common and have similar properties at cosmic noon.
Gas outflows are prevalent in LRDs, indicated by blueshifted HeI absorption.
LRDs contribute significantly to the AGN population at high redshift.
Abstract
We report the discovery of a little red dot (LRD), dubbed BiRD ('big red dot'), at in the field around the quasar SDSSJ1030+0524. Using NIRCam images, we identified it as a bright outlier in the color vs magnitude diagram of point sources in the field. The NIRCam/WFSS spectrum reveals the emission from HeI and PaG line, both showing a narrow and a broad () component. The HeI line is affected by an absorption feature, tracing dense gas with HeI column density in the level , depending on the location of the absorber, which is outflowing at the speed of . As observed in the majority of LRDs, BiRD does not show X-ray or radio emission. The BH mass and the bolometric luminosity, both inferred from the PaG broad component,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPhotocathodes and Microchannel Plates · GaN-based semiconductor devices and materials
