Little Red Dots and Their Progenitors from Direct Collapse Black Holes

Abstract The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered a new population of objects, the Little Red Dots (LRDs), characterized by V-shaped spectra indicative of strong breaks around the Balmer limit and a compact morphology that gave them their name. A popular explanation is that they are a subpopulation of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and/or supermassive black holes (SMBHs) predominantly found in the high-redshift Universe ( z ≳ 3). Similarly, direct collapse black holes (DCBHs), theorized to form from collapsing massive, extremely metal-poor gas clouds, have been invoked to explain high-redshift quasars, the most massive AGN subpopulation. Here, we employ the semianalytical code A-SLOTH to produce a…