TBD LBD: The nature of `little blue dots'

Abstract

Previous Sirocco radiative-transfer models of gas-cocooned AGN predicted lower-column counterparts to little red dots (LRDs): compact, X-ray-weak sources with bluer continuum slopes and Balmer jumps rather than Balmer breaks. The recently identified population of little blue dots (LBDs) closely resembles this predicted phase. Here we explore these lower-column-density cocoons in which nebular recombination emission remains visible while strong Balmer-continuum absorption is avoided. We find that a sequence of increasing column density connects more classical AGN spectra, Balmer-jump LBD-like spectra at $N_{\rm H}\!\sim\!{\rm few}\times10^{24} \mathrm{cm^{-2}}$, and Balmer-break LRD-like spectra at higher columns. In this sequence, electron scattering produces exponential line wings and suppresses X-ray emission before strong Balmer absorption features, characteristic of higher column densities, appear. We therefore propose that LBDs are lower-column analogues of LRDs within a common gas-cocooned AGN sequence. This interpretation predicts that Balmer-jump emission, X-ray weakness, permitted lines with exponential wings, He II $λ$4686 emission, smaller H$α$ FWHM values and equivalent widths than in LRDs, and weak or absent absorption features are characteristic of LBDs. We compare to three example LBD spectra and identify Balmer-jump signatures in them.