Evolutionary Tracks and Spectral Properties of Quasi-stars and Their Correlation with Little Red Dots

Abstract JWST has revealed a population of red, compact, high-redshift ( z ∼ 3–10) objects referred to as “Little Red Dots” (LRDs). These objects exhibit unusual spectral features reminiscent of stellar spectra with blackbody-like spectral energy distributions, large hydrogen Balmer breaks, Balmer line absorption, and classical stellar absorption features such as calcium H&K and the calcium triplet. Following the recent suggestion that these may be actively accreting direct-collapse black holes in the process of assembly, i.e., quasi-stars, we present evolutionary models of quasi-stars using our recently released, publicly available MESA-QUEST modeling framework. We compute a grid of models spanning a…

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  Simons Foundation

  Award: MP-SCMPS-00001470