An upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in dust from ALMA observations in 60 Little Red Dots
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Casey, Caitlin M. Akins, Hollis B. Finkelstein, Steven L. Franco, Maximilien Fujimoto, Seiji Liu, Daizhong Long, Arianna S. Magdis, Georgios Manning, Sinclaire M. McKinney, Jed Shuntov, Marko Tanaka, Takumi S. |
| author_facet | Casey, Caitlin M. Akins, Hollis B. Finkelstein, Steven L. Franco, Maximilien Fujimoto, Seiji Liu, Daizhong Long, Arianna S. Magdis, Georgios Manning, Sinclaire M. McKinney, Jed Shuntov, Marko Tanaka, Takumi S. |
| contents | By virtue of their red color, the dust in little red dots (LRDs) has been thought to be of appreciable influence, whether that dust is distributed in a torus around a compact active galactic nucleus (AGN) or diffuse in the interstellar medium (ISM) of nascent galaxies. In Casey et al. (2024) we predicted that, based on the compact sizes of LRDs (unresolved in JWST NIRCam imaging), detection of an appreciable dust mass would be unlikely. Here we present follow-up ALMA 1.3mm continuum observations of a sample of 60 LRDs drawn from Akins et al. (2024). None of the 60 LRDs are detected in imaging that reaches an average depth of $σ_{rms}=22\,μJy$. A stack of the 60 LRDs also results in a non-detection, with an inverse-variance weighted flux density measurement of $S_{1.3mm}=2.1\pm2.9\,μJy$. This observed limit translates to a 3$σ$ upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in LRDs' dust mass, and $\lesssim10^{11}$ L$_\odot$ in total dust luminosity; both are a factor of 10$\times$ deeper than previous submm stack limits for LRDs. These results are consistent with either the interpretation that LRDs are reddened due to compact but modest dust reservoirs (with $A_{V}\sim2-4$) or, alternatively, that instead of being reddened by dust, they have extreme Balmer breaks generated by dense gas ($>10^{9}\,cm^{-3}$) enshrouding a central black hole. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18873 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | An upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in dust from ALMA observations in 60 Little Red Dots Casey, Caitlin M. Akins, Hollis B. Finkelstein, Steven L. Franco, Maximilien Fujimoto, Seiji Liu, Daizhong Long, Arianna S. Magdis, Georgios Manning, Sinclaire M. McKinney, Jed Shuntov, Marko Tanaka, Takumi S. Astrophysics of Galaxies By virtue of their red color, the dust in little red dots (LRDs) has been thought to be of appreciable influence, whether that dust is distributed in a torus around a compact active galactic nucleus (AGN) or diffuse in the interstellar medium (ISM) of nascent galaxies. In Casey et al. (2024) we predicted that, based on the compact sizes of LRDs (unresolved in JWST NIRCam imaging), detection of an appreciable dust mass would be unlikely. Here we present follow-up ALMA 1.3mm continuum observations of a sample of 60 LRDs drawn from Akins et al. (2024). None of the 60 LRDs are detected in imaging that reaches an average depth of $σ_{rms}=22\,μJy$. A stack of the 60 LRDs also results in a non-detection, with an inverse-variance weighted flux density measurement of $S_{1.3mm}=2.1\pm2.9\,μJy$. This observed limit translates to a 3$σ$ upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in LRDs' dust mass, and $\lesssim10^{11}$ L$_\odot$ in total dust luminosity; both are a factor of 10$\times$ deeper than previous submm stack limits for LRDs. These results are consistent with either the interpretation that LRDs are reddened due to compact but modest dust reservoirs (with $A_{V}\sim2-4$) or, alternatively, that instead of being reddened by dust, they have extreme Balmer breaks generated by dense gas ($>10^{9}\,cm^{-3}$) enshrouding a central black hole. |
| title | An upper limit of 10$^6$ M$_\odot$ in dust from ALMA observations in 60 Little Red Dots |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18873 |