The only lighting in the scene shown below should be emission from the white dots on the green surface but I'm getting this weird headlampy reflection. You can see it in the aluminum box in the back.

Is there some automatic headlamp added in Mantra when no lights are present? Other ideas?

I'm not a lighting guy so if anyone can shed any (wait for it) illumination here, it would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Can you put your HIP file?

Sure thing. Here you go

kevinthebright
Is there some automatic headlamp added in Mantra when no lights are present?

Yup, that's exactly what's happening. If there is no light object in the scene, mantra will default to adding a headlight. You can disable that in the Object tab of the mantra node.

As DaJuice mentioned it's because of default headlight.
You can turn it off and then use an ambient light in order to illuminate your scene.

Found it, thanks for the help DaJuice and Nima.