Jenny Greene

"Jenny Greene is a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University, who has done some seminal work on massive black holes and their host galaxies. Interestingly, she teaches algebra at NJ state prisons through the Prison Teaching Initiative."
- Lina Necib

The nature of 'Little Red Dots'
One of the most surprising results from JWST has been the discovery of a large population of compact red sources at z>4, with very red rest-frame optical colors, blue UV slopes, and broad Balmer lines. The compact sizes and luminous broad lines strongly suggest these objects are powered by accreting supermassive black holes, but their lack of evidence for X-ray emission or hot dust in the mid-infrared calls that conclusion into question. Regardless, their high number densities (~5% of the galaxy population) makes them an important new contribution to the high-redshift galaxy zoo. I will discuss our ongoing efforts to understand the nature of this population, and what they may teach us about the growth of black holes and galaxies.