X-RAY VIEW OF LITTLE RED DOTS: DO THEY HOST SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES?

X-RAY VIEW OF LITTLE RED DOTS: DO THEY HOST SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES?

Draft version June 14, 2024 | TONIMA TASNIM ANANNA, ÁKOS BOGDÁN, ORSOLYA E. KOVÁCS, PRIYAMVADA NATARAJAN, RYAN C. HICKOX
The study investigates the nature of Little Red Dots (LRDs), a population of compact, high-redshift, dust-reddened galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The authors use ultra-deep Chandra observations to probe the X-ray emission from LRDs behind the lensing galaxy cluster Abell 2744. They find that individual LRDs do not emit detectable X-ray signals, placing upper limits on the mass of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) hosted by these galaxies. By stacking the X-ray photons from the LRDs, they achieve a higher signal-to-noise ratio and detect a weak signal for a subset of LRDs with broad-line Hα emission, suggesting an SMBH mass of approximately \(3.2 \times 10^6\) M⊙. However, this mass is significantly lower than the median SMBH mass inferred from JWST data. The discrepancy between X-ray and near-infrared measurements hints that the scaling relations used to infer SMBH masses from Hα lines and virial relations may not be applicable for high-redshift LRDs. The study concludes that LRDs do not host over-massive SMBHs and are consistent with hosting SMBHs that accrete at a few percent of their Eddington limit.The study investigates the nature of Little Red Dots (LRDs), a population of compact, high-redshift, dust-reddened galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The authors use ultra-deep Chandra observations to probe the X-ray emission from LRDs behind the lensing galaxy cluster Abell 2744. They find that individual LRDs do not emit detectable X-ray signals, placing upper limits on the mass of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) hosted by these galaxies. By stacking the X-ray photons from the LRDs, they achieve a higher signal-to-noise ratio and detect a weak signal for a subset of LRDs with broad-line Hα emission, suggesting an SMBH mass of approximately \(3.2 \times 10^6\) M⊙. However, this mass is significantly lower than the median SMBH mass inferred from JWST data. The discrepancy between X-ray and near-infrared measurements hints that the scaling relations used to infer SMBH masses from Hα lines and virial relations may not be applicable for high-redshift LRDs. The study concludes that LRDs do not host over-massive SMBHs and are consistent with hosting SMBHs that accrete at a few percent of their Eddington limit.
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