Published photometric selections miss about one in five of 151 spectroscopically confirmed Little Red Dots: a learned selection and a candidate catalogue for nine JWST fields
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Published Little Red Dot (LRD) samples inherit their selection rules' incompleteness. We test seven, reimplemented once on DAWN JWST Archive photometry of nine fields, against 151 spectroscopically confirmed LRDs: 149 from three published lists, 2 from a fixed spectral test. As re-implemented they recover 107 and miss 44, about three in ten. Of the 44, 11 are in a published LRD catalogue, missed only by our code. The other 33 are in no published photometric selection: 21.9 per cent of the 151, 18.7 per cent (23 of 123) at z>=4 and 21.1 per cent (31 of 147) at z> 3. We rank the catalogue on held-out sky with positive-unlabelled bagging of gradient-boosted trees anchored on 4,979 spectroscopic non-LRDs. At the union's burden it recovers 123 of them, including 20 of the 44 that no rule selects, against a shuffled-label floor reaching 14 on the 41 in support at the shuffled runs' own thresholds, and lets through 70 anchors against 46. Paired on the 147 in support, 20 against 3 (exact McNemar, p= 0.00049); it leads in all five regions at matched burdens. A label-free imitation of the rules recovers 116 there, against the union's 106 (p= 0.021) and the model's 124: ranking rather than cutting carries 10 of that 18-object gap. The labels' increment is not established. We release the model, code, tables and 1,207 unlisted candidates, none confirmed: a target list, not a discovery. In its equal-burden tier, 23.5 per cent of those observed have a secure z<=3. Deposited as a priority record while the manuscript is revised. The files (manuscript PDF, LaTeX source, and the code release as pushed to https://github.com/bakathefish/redress at commit 2f67aba) are restricted until then.
Author: Puri, Rudra
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7208766812
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