Fuzzy Dark Matter as a Solution to Reconcile the Stellar Mass Density of High-z Massive Galaxies and Reionization History

Abstract

Abstract The JWST early release data show unexpected high stellar mass densities of massive galaxies at 7 < z < 11. A high star formation efficiency is probably needed to explain this. However, such a high star formation efficiency would greatly increase the number of ionizing photons, which would be in serious conflict with current cosmic microwave background (CMB) and other measurements of cosmic reionization history. To solve this problem, we explore fuzzy dark matter (FDM), which is composed of ultra-light scalar particles, e.g., ultra-light axions, and calculate its halo mass function and stellar mass density for different axion masses. We find that a FDM model with m a ≃ 5 × 10−23 eV and a possible uncertainty range ∼3 × 10−23–10−22 eV can effectively suppress the formation of small halos and galaxies, so that with higher star formation efficiency both the JWST data at z ∼ 8 and the reionization history measurements from optical depth of CMB scattering and ionization fraction can be simultaneously matched. We also find that the JWST data at z ∼ 10 are still too high to fit in this scenario. We note that the estimated mean redshift of the sample may have large uncertainty, that it can be as low as z ∼ 9 depending on adopted spectral energy distribution templates and photometric-redshift code. In addition, warm dark matter with ∼keV mass can also be an alternative choice, since it should have similar effects on halo formation as FDM.