Are James Webb Space Telescope observations consistent with warm dark matter?

Abstract

We compare observed with predicted distributions of galaxy stellar masses $M_*$ and galaxy rest-frame ultra-violet luminosities per unit bandwidth $L_{UV}$, in the redshift range $z = 2$ to 13. The comparison is presented as a function of the comoving warm dark matter free-streaming cut-off wavenumber $k_{fs}$. For this comparison the theory is a minimal extension of the Press-Schechter formalism with only two parameters: the star formation efficiency, and a proportionality factor between the star formation rate per galaxy and $L_{UV}$. These two parameters are fixed to their values obtained prior to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data. The purpose of this comparison is to identify if, and where, detailed astrophysical evolution is needed to account for the new JWST observations.