Pith. sign in

REVIEW 6 cited by

Are the ultra-high-redshift galaxies at z > 10 surprising in the context of standard galaxy formation models?

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2304.04348 v2 pith:P4QF7IQV submitted 2023-04-10 astro-ph.GA

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords modelsformationgalaxyfindnumberstellarcontextcurrent
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

Signed reviews

No signed human review yet.

0 comments
read the original abstract

A substantial number of ultra-high redshift (8 < z < 17) galaxy candidates have been detected with JWST, posing the question: are these observational results surprising in the context of current galaxy formation models? We address this question using the well-established Santa Cruz semi-analytic models, implemented within merger trees from the new suite of cosmological N-body simulations GUREFT, which were carefully designed for ultra-high redshift studies. Using our fiducial models calibrated at z=0, we present predictions for stellar mass functions, rest-frame UV luminosity functions, and various scaling relations. We find that our (dust-free) models predict galaxy number densities at z~11 (z~13) that are an order of magnitude (a factor of ~30) lower than the observational estimates. We estimate the uncertainty in the observed number densities due to cosmic variance, and find that it leads to a fractional error of ~20-30% at z=11 (~30-80% at z=14) for a 100 sq arcmin field. We explore which processes in our models are most likely to be rate-limiting for the formation of luminous galaxies at these early epochs, considering the halo formation rate, gas cooling, star formation, and stellar feedback, and conclude that it is mainly efficient stellar-driven winds. We find that a modest boost of a factor of ~4 to the UV luminosities, which could arise from a top-heavy stellar initial mass function, would bring our current models into agreement with the observations. Adding a stochastic component to the UV luminosity can also reconcile our results with the observations.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. The COLIBRE-SKIRT pipeline: Calibration-free dust radiative transfer postprocessing for cosmological simulations

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    The COLIBRE-SKIRT pipeline reproduces the observed low-redshift cosmic SED without calibrating the post-processing, using live dust from the simulation and a new 'split & scale' grain-size mapping.

  2. SCRIPT in the Cosmic Dawn: Distinguishing Redshift-Evolving Galaxy Populations with 21-cm Fluctuations

    astro-ph.CO 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The 21-cm power spectrum, not the sky-averaged signal alone, can distinguish a redshift-evolving galaxy population from a static one during the cosmic dawn.

  3. Bright Galaxies at Cosmic Dawn: A Cloud-Scale Star Formation Model Unifying Variable SFE, IMFs, and Stochasticity

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A cloud-based semi-analytic model shows that a top-heavy stellar initial mass function and a cloud-property-dependent star-formation efficiency, rather than cloud mass or density, most strongly shape the UV luminosity...

  4. Deep Spectroscopic Follow-Up of Maisie's Galaxy -- A Typical Galaxy in the Early Universe

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Deep JWST spectroscopy of Maisie's Galaxy at z=11.4 reveals moderate star formation, metallicity, and ionization consistent with a typical galaxy on the early star-formation main sequence rather than an extreme source.

  5. Dark Secrets of Baryons: Illuminating Dark Matter-Baryon Interactions with JWST

    hep-ph 2025-11 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    JWST ultraviolet luminosity function data currently provide the strongest upper limits on velocity-dependent (∝v^{-2}) dark matter–proton scattering for sub-GeV dark matter.

  6. Predicting the number density of heavy seed massive black holes due to an intense Lyman-Werner field

    astro-ph.CO 2025-02 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    The Lyman-Werner radiation channel alone forms at most about 10^-4 heavy seeds per cMpc^3 at z ~ 10, probably too few to explain JWST's high-redshift black hole candidates.

Pith tools