A Radio-Bright Local Little Red Dot Analog

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope revealed the existence in the early Universe ($z >$ 4) of large populations of little red dots (LRDs), compact red luminous sources that host rapidly growing supermassive black holes (SMBHs) surrounded by coeval nuclear starbursts. LRDs have defining properties, one of which is the absence of radio detections. LRDs could be radio-undetected because of their large distances. A way to investigate the radio properties of LRDs is to search for radio emission in their local analogs, the Local Little Red Dot (LLRD) galaxies at $z <$ 1 with analogous properties to LRDs. We report the radio continuum detection of the LLRD analog J204837.26${-}$002437.2 ($z$ = 0.4332, hereinafter J2048). This adds to the previous radio detection of two other LLRDs. However, with a flux density of 3.0$\pm$0.2 mJy at 3.0 GHz, J2048 is two orders of magnitude more radio luminous than the previous detections. The spectral index of $\alpha$ = -0.39$\pm$0.04 is consistent with moderately optically-thick synchrotron emission. The radio luminosity of J2048 is $1.2 \times 10^{41}~ \mathrm{erg ~s^{-1}}$, in the lower end of the range defined by radio-loud giant elliptical galaxies and quasars of $L_R$ = $10^{41-46} ~\mathrm{erg ~s^{-1}}$. The expected radio luminosity of the SMBH associated with J2048 is estimated to be about an order of magnitude larger, suggesting that its radio luminosity could potentially be strongly dimmed. A cosmological ($z >$ 4) LRD with radio luminosity similar to that of J2048 would be detectable using the VLA with moderately long integrations.