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Stellar contribution and broad Balmer line origin in a nuclear star cluster scenario

Ascertain the extent to which a nuclear star cluster containing massive or supermassive stars could contribute to the rest-optical and near-IR spectral energy distribution of The Cliff, and determine whether such a stellar configuration can produce broad, symmetric Balmer emission lines comparable to those observed.

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Background

The authors consider a scenario where (super)massive stars in a nuclear star cluster embedded in dense gas might provide a red continuum and contribute to the observed SED of The Cliff.

They highlight that it is unknown whether this stellar configuration can generate the observed broad, symmetric Balmer lines without invoking an accretion disk, motivating targeted modeling of the stellar and gas interplay in such environments.

References

To what extent the stellar emission would contribute to the SED, and whether this scenario can produce the broad symmetric Balmer emission lines is currently unclear.

— A remarkable Ruby: Absorption in dense gas, rather than evolved stars, drives the extreme Balmer break of a Little Red Dot at $z=3.5$ (2503.16600 - Graaff et al., 20 Mar 2025) in Section 6.4 (A ‘Black hole star’?)