Title: Little Red Dots and the Formation of Massive Black Holes in the First Billion Years
Abstract: The James Webb Space Telescope has opened a new window onto the first billion years of cosmic history, allowing us to study the birth of the first stars, galaxies, and black holes. Among its most striking discoveries is a mysterious population of compact, red sources known as “little red dots” (LRDs), whose nature we do not yet understand. I will first discuss the earliest discoveries of these sources and their puzzling properties, which pointed to either extremely dense stellar systems or unusual accreting black holes. I will then show how strong gravitational lensing provides a unique opportunity to look inside these extremely compact sources. In one of the most magnified LRDs studied to date, a source that normally appears as a single compact dot is resolved into two distinct components: an ultra-compact red source and a nearby UV-bright companion. I will end by exploring what these close red-blue pairs may tell us about the formation of massive black hole seeds through the synchronized-pair pathway. In this picture, UV radiation from the companion creates the right conditions for gas to rapidly collapse into a massive black hole seed, potentially connecting the mysterious little red dots to long-standing theoretical models for the formation of the first massive black holes.
For Zoom information, please contact the seminar coordinators.
