Papers › A Census of Photometrically Selected Little Red Dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST Blank Fields
A Census of Photometrically Selected Little Red Dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST Blank Fields
Vasily Kokorev, Karina I. Caputi, Jenny E. Greene, Pratika Dayal, Maxime Trebitsch, Sam E. Cutler, Seiji Fujimoto, Ivo Labbé, Tim B. Miller, Edoardo Iani, Rafael Navarro-Carrera, Pierluigi Rinaldi
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Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered numerous faint active galactic nuclei (AGN) at z∼5 and beyond. These objects are key to our understanding of the formation of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), their co-evolution with host galaxies, as well as the role of AGN in cosmic reionization. Using photometric colors and size measurements, we perform a search for compact red objects in an array of blank deep JWST/NIRCam fields totaling ∼640 arcmin². Our careful selection yields 260 reddened AGN candidates at 4<zₚₕₒₜ<9, dominated by a point-source like central component (⟨r_(eff) ⟩<130 pc) and displaying a dichotomy in their rest-frame colors (blue UV and red optical slopes). Quasar model fitting reveals our objects to be moderately dust extincted (A_V∼1.6), which is reflected in their inferred bolometric luminosities of L_(bol) = 10⁴⁴⁻⁴⁷ erg/s, and fainter UV magnitudes M_(UV) ≃ -17 to -22. Thanks to the large areas explored, we extend the existing dusty AGN luminosity functions to both fainter and brighter magnitudes, estimating their number densities to be ×100 higher than for UV-selected quasars of similar magnitudes. At the same time they constitute only a small fraction of all UV-selected galaxies at similar redshifts, but this percentage rises to ∼10\% for M_(UV)∼-22 at z∼7. Finally, assuming a conservative case of accretion at the Eddington rate, we place a lower limit on the SMBH mass function at z∼5, finding it to be consistent with both theory and previous JWST observations.
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