Little Red Dots are Direct-collapse Black Hole–forming Galaxies

Abstract “Little red dots” (LRDs) at 4 < z < 8 are one of the most challenging discoveries by JWST to date because their distinctive V-shaped spectra and compact morphologies defy conventional astrophysical interpretation. Previous attempts to explain LRDs as compact stellar systems, heavily cocooned black holes (BHs) with differential flows, supermassive stars, or more exotic objects like “black hole stars” cannot either show how they formed, explain the origin of the dense shells needed for the absorption features in their spectra, or account for their observed abundances or inferred lifetimes. Here we show that LRDs are simply direct-collapse BH galaxies in which the BH is still shrouded by the massive disk that created it. Our cosmological simulations yield spectra that are good matches to those of LRDs because high densities at the center of the disk trap X-rays from the BH and produce the observed Balmer absorption features while allowing UV, optical, and reprocessed IR flux to partly escape. The host galaxy forms a dense 10 8 M ⊙ cluster of stars with a radius of 150 pc next to the BH, consistent with observations of LRDs. Our models reproduce a wide variety of LRD spectra, from typical objects like RUBIES-EGS-42046 at z = 5.28 to those with the strongest Balmer breaks such as MoM-BH * −1 at z = 7.76 and those at the highest redshifts like CAPERS-LRD-z9 at z = 9.29.