Little Red Dots (LRDs) are enigmatic, compact, red galaxies at high redshift, z∼4-7, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope. Broad emission lines in the absence of X-ray and radio counterparts suggest that they host accreting supermassive black holes embedded in dense gaseous envelopes. This black-hole-envelope configuration facilitates efficient photohadronic interactions and neutrino production. Remarkably, their observed source number density and luminosity are compatible with the energetics of the diffuse neutrino background. We consider that relativistic jets and outflows are launched from the black hole and propagate through low-density polar funnels within envelopes, where particle acceleration and neutrino emission occur. This leads to LRDs being effectively hidden sources. Our analytic and numerical calculations show that, in an optimistic scenario, LRDs can contribute ∼30% of the observed diffuse background at TeV−sub-PeV energies, predominantly through photomeson production. At high neutrino energies, ≳105.5GeV, inverse-Compton cooling of muons modifies the resulting flavor ratio, providing a distinctive diagnostic for IceCube-Gen2 and other upcoming neutrino telescopes.
@article{arxiv.2601.11203,
title = {Little Red Dots as Hidden Neutrino Sources},
author = {Riku Kuze and Kunihito Ioka and Kohta Murase and Shigeo S. Kimura and Kohei Inayoshi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.11203},
year = {2026}
}