FAbio Paccuci (Center for Astrophysics, Harvard) - JWST's Little Red Dots: Masters of Disguise in the Early Universe

The "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) are a puzzling population of compact red sources at redshift z > 4, identified by JWST. These objects challenge our current astrophysical models in several ways. First, I will discuss the detection of overmassive black holes relative to the stellar mass of their host galaxies. Second, I will address the X-ray weakness problem, where these sources remain undetected in deep X-ray surveys. I will use GRRMHD simulations to show how mildly super-Eddington accretion can resolve this issue. Third, I will explore the extremely high stellar densities at the cores of these objects and their potential for triggering runaway stellar collisions. To conclude, I will show how all observed properties of LRDs are easily and self-consistently explained by identifying them with accreting Direct Collapse Black Holes within the so-called Direct-Little Red Dot model.