James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: Here There Be (Dusty) Monsters: High Redshift AGN are Dustier Than Their Hosts

Paper abstract: JWST spectroscopy has discovered a population of z \gtrsim 3.5 galaxies with broad Balmer emission lines, and narrow forbidden lines, that are consistent with hosting active galactic nuclei (AGN). Many of these systems, now known as ``little red dots" (LRDs), are compact and have unique colors that are very red in the optical/near-infrared and blue in the ultraviolet. The relative contribution of galaxy starlight and AGN to these systems remains uncertain, especially for the galaxies with unusual blue+red spectral energy distributions. In this work, we use Balmer decrements to measure the independent dust attenuation of the broad and narrow emission-line components of a sample of 29 broad-line AGN identified from three public JWST spectroscopy surveys: CEERS, JADES, and RUBIES. Stacking the narrow components from the spectra of 25 sources with broad H\rm{\alpha} and no broad H\rm{\beta} results in a median narrow H\rm{\alpha}/H\rm{\beta} = 2.47^{+0.05}_{-0.05} (consistent with A_{v} = 0) and broad H\rm{\alpha}/H\rm{\beta} > 8.85 (A_{v} > 3.63). The narrow and broad Balmer decrements imply little-to-no attenuation of the narrow emission lines, which are consistent with being powered by star formation and located on larger physical scales. Meanwhile, the lower limit in broad H\rm{\alpha}/H\rm{\beta} decrement, with broad H\rm{\beta} undetected in the stacked spectrum of 25 broad-H\rm{\alpha} AGN, implies significant dust attenuation of the broad-line emitting region that is presumably associated with the central AGN. Our results indicate that these systems, on average, are consistent with heavily dust-attenuated AGN powering the red parts of their SED while their blue UV emission is powered by unattenuated star formation in the host galaxy.