Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons.

ABSTRACT: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has uncovered many compact galaxies at high redshift with broad hydrogen and helium lines, including the enigmatic population of little red dots (LRDs)^1,2. The nature of these galaxies is debated and is attributed to supermassive black holes (SMBHs)^3,4 or intense star formation⁵. They exhibit unusual properties for SMBHs, such as black holes that are overmassive for their host galaxies⁴ and extremely weak X-ray^6-10 and radio^6,11-13 emission. Here we show that in most objects studied with the highest-quality JWST spectra, the lines are broadened by electron scattering with a narrow intrinsic core. The data require very high electron column densities and compact sizes (light days), which,

SUBMITTER: Rusakov V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12804088 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature