_version_ 1866910116996972544
author Tanaka, Takumi S.
Silverman, John D.
Shimasaku, Kazuhiro
Arita, Junya
Akins, Hollis B.
Wang, Feige
Inayoshi, Kohei
Ding, Xuheng
Onoue, Masafusa
Liu, Zhaoxuan
Casey, Caitlin M.
Lambrides, Erini
Kokorev, Vasily
Jin, Shuowen
Faisst, Andreas L.
Lyu, Jianwei
Schindler, Jan-Torge
Wu, Yunjing
Drakos, Nicole
Shen, Yue
Li, Junyao
Zhuang, Mingyang
Fei, Qinyue
Ito, Kei
Tee, Wei Leong
Liu, Weizhe
Ren, Wenke
Kiyota, Tomokazu
Li, Zi-Jian
Matsui, Suin
Ando, Makoto
Hatano, Shun
Fujii, Michiko S.
Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
Koekemoer, Anton M.
Liu, Daizhong
McCracken, Henry Joy
Rhodes, Jason
Robertson, Brant E.
Franco, Maximilien
Kakiichi, Koki
Yang, Jinyi
Meyer, Romain A.
Andika, Irham T.
Cloonan, Aidan P.
Fan, Xiaohui
Gozaliasl, Ghassem
Harish, Santosh
Hayward, Christopher C.
Huertas-Company, Marc
Kakkad, Darshan
Kinugawa, Tomoya
Li, Mingyu
Roy, Namrata
Shuntov, Marko
Talia, Margherita
Toft, Sune
Vijayan, Aswin P.
Zhang, Yiyang
author_facet Tanaka, Takumi S.
Silverman, John D.
Shimasaku, Kazuhiro
Arita, Junya
Akins, Hollis B.
Wang, Feige
Inayoshi, Kohei
Ding, Xuheng
Onoue, Masafusa
Liu, Zhaoxuan
Casey, Caitlin M.
Lambrides, Erini
Kokorev, Vasily
Jin, Shuowen
Faisst, Andreas L.
Lyu, Jianwei
Schindler, Jan-Torge
Wu, Yunjing
Drakos, Nicole
Shen, Yue
Li, Junyao
Zhuang, Mingyang
Fei, Qinyue
Ito, Kei
Tee, Wei Leong
Liu, Weizhe
Ren, Wenke
Kiyota, Tomokazu
Li, Zi-Jian
Matsui, Suin
Ando, Makoto
Hatano, Shun
Fujii, Michiko S.
Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
Koekemoer, Anton M.
Liu, Daizhong
McCracken, Henry Joy
Rhodes, Jason
Robertson, Brant E.
Franco, Maximilien
Kakiichi, Koki
Yang, Jinyi
Meyer, Romain A.
Andika, Irham T.
Cloonan, Aidan P.
Fan, Xiaohui
Gozaliasl, Ghassem
Harish, Santosh
Hayward, Christopher C.
Huertas-Company, Marc
Kakkad, Darshan
Kinugawa, Tomoya
Li, Mingyu
Roy, Namrata
Shuntov, Marko
Talia, Margherita
Toft, Sune
Vijayan, Aswin P.
Zhang, Yiyang
contents ``Little Red Dots'' (LRDs) are an abundant high-redshift population newly discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and considered to be an early growth phase of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Using a method of pixel-by-pixel color selection and relaxing the compactness criteria, we identify four dual LRD candidates in the COSMOS-Web survey with projected separations of $0.\!\!^{\prime\prime}2$-$1.\!\!^{\prime\prime}2$. A comparison between existing LRD samples and mock data reveals that the projected separations of these dual LRD candidates are unlikely to result from chance projections of objects at different redshifts. Furthermore, two of the four systems are covered by COSMOS-3D slitless spectroscopy, and a single-line detection at the same observed wavelength for each LRD in a pair strongly supports that they are at identical redshifts. Assuming that the detected lines are H$α$ based on their high equivalent width and broad profile, the spectroscopic redshifts of $z=5.822$ and $5.464$ for the two pairs are consistent with their photometric redshifts, yielding projected separations of $1.64$ and $7.36\,{\rm kpc}$. These discoveries suggest that the angular auto-correlation function (ACF) of LRDs exhibits an excess ($\sim20$-$30$ times) on sub-arcsec (kilo-parsec) separations compared to an extrapolation of a power-law ACF of JWST-found AGNs measured over $10^{\prime\prime}$-$100^{\prime\prime}$. Our sample is likely to represent precursors of mergers between LRDs, and such mergers may be one of the mechanisms that can drive the rapid growth of SMBHs in their early evolutionary stages.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_14246
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hidden in Pixels I: Discovery of dual "little red dots" indicates excess clustering on kilo-parsec scales
Tanaka, Takumi S.
Silverman, John D.
Shimasaku, Kazuhiro
Arita, Junya
Akins, Hollis B.
Wang, Feige
Inayoshi, Kohei
Ding, Xuheng
Onoue, Masafusa
Liu, Zhaoxuan
Casey, Caitlin M.
Lambrides, Erini
Kokorev, Vasily
Jin, Shuowen
Faisst, Andreas L.
Lyu, Jianwei
Schindler, Jan-Torge
Wu, Yunjing
Drakos, Nicole
Shen, Yue
Li, Junyao
Zhuang, Mingyang
Fei, Qinyue
Ito, Kei
Tee, Wei Leong
Liu, Weizhe
Ren, Wenke
Kiyota, Tomokazu
Li, Zi-Jian
Matsui, Suin
Ando, Makoto
Hatano, Shun
Fujii, Michiko S.
Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
Koekemoer, Anton M.
Liu, Daizhong
McCracken, Henry Joy
Rhodes, Jason
Robertson, Brant E.
Franco, Maximilien
Kakiichi, Koki
Yang, Jinyi
Meyer, Romain A.
Andika, Irham T.
Cloonan, Aidan P.
Fan, Xiaohui
Gozaliasl, Ghassem
Harish, Santosh
Hayward, Christopher C.
Huertas-Company, Marc
Kakkad, Darshan
Kinugawa, Tomoya
Li, Mingyu
Roy, Namrata
Shuntov, Marko
Talia, Margherita
Toft, Sune
Vijayan, Aswin P.
Zhang, Yiyang
Astrophysics of Galaxies
``Little Red Dots'' (LRDs) are an abundant high-redshift population newly discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and considered to be an early growth phase of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Using a method of pixel-by-pixel color selection and relaxing the compactness criteria, we identify four dual LRD candidates in the COSMOS-Web survey with projected separations of $0.\!\!^{\prime\prime}2$-$1.\!\!^{\prime\prime}2$. A comparison between existing LRD samples and mock data reveals that the projected separations of these dual LRD candidates are unlikely to result from chance projections of objects at different redshifts. Furthermore, two of the four systems are covered by COSMOS-3D slitless spectroscopy, and a single-line detection at the same observed wavelength for each LRD in a pair strongly supports that they are at identical redshifts. Assuming that the detected lines are H$α$ based on their high equivalent width and broad profile, the spectroscopic redshifts of $z=5.822$ and $5.464$ for the two pairs are consistent with their photometric redshifts, yielding projected separations of $1.64$ and $7.36\,{\rm kpc}$. These discoveries suggest that the angular auto-correlation function (ACF) of LRDs exhibits an excess ($\sim20$-$30$ times) on sub-arcsec (kilo-parsec) separations compared to an extrapolation of a power-law ACF of JWST-found AGNs measured over $10^{\prime\prime}$-$100^{\prime\prime}$. Our sample is likely to represent precursors of mergers between LRDs, and such mergers may be one of the mechanisms that can drive the rapid growth of SMBHs in their early evolutionary stages.
title Hidden in Pixels I: Discovery of dual "little red dots" indicates excess clustering on kilo-parsec scales
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14246