Jenny Greene

Jenny Greene

Jenny Greene

Greene is a professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University. She studies black holes and galaxy evolution. She is also the faculty director of the Princeton Prison Teaching Initiative.

Broad lines and Breaks: The Elusive Nature of Little Red Dots

One of the more intriguing new populations unveiled by JWST has been compact red sources characterized by a red rest-frame optical continuum, a weak blue UV component, compact morphologies and broad Balmer lines. The sources are so common that they constitute a few percent of known galaxies at z>5. However, their spectral energy distributions defy easy classification, and we still do not know if they are powered predominantly by accretion onto massive black holes, or early vigorous star formation. I will discuss possible explanations, and the implications for black hole and galaxy growth.