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Connecting the Dots: UV-bright Companions of Little Red Dots as Lyman–Werner Sources Enabling Direct-collapse Black Hole Formation

  • Authors: Josephine F. W. Baggen, Matthew T. Scoggins, Pieter van Dokkum, Zoltán Haiman, Alberto Torralba, Jorryt Matthee

Josephine F. W. Baggen et al 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1002 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 6.

Left panel: effective projected separation between the compact red component and its associated companion(s) as a function of the inferred luminosity L5100. The luminosity is measured using the NIRCam filter closest to rest-frame 5100 Å and converted to a luminosity using the source redshift. The top panel shows the companion fraction as a function of luminosity; we find a striking trend where the companion fraction increases with L5100, reaching nearly ≧80%–100% completeness for the most luminous LRDs in our sample. Right panel: the UV magnitude of the companion(s) (rest-frame 1500 Å) as a function of L5100, indicating that companions associated with these high-luminosity LRDs are themselves significantly brighter in the UV.

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