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A smooth filament origin for distant prolate galaxies seen by JWST and HST

Nature Astronomy (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The initial gravitational collapse of dark matter and gas formed a universal filamentary network where the first galaxies formed, with shapes and sizes that depended on the type of dark matter. Claims from deep-space imaging surveys that elongated galaxies predominate at z > 3 are examined here by comparison with detailed hydrodynamical simulations of cold dark matter (CDM), warm dark matter (WDM) and wave/fuzzy dark matter (ψDM). For CDM and WDM, we have sufficient volume, 103 Mpc/h3, to generate galaxies with stellar masses >109 M⊙ at z > 2, which allows a comparison with the CEERS and CANDELS surveys. Here we find that the observed tendency towards elongated, prolate-shaped young galaxies is well matched by WDM based on material accreted along smooth filaments during the first ~500 Myr, with little dependence on stellar mass. This contrasts with CDM, where the stellar morphology is mainly spheroidal and formed from the merging of fragmented filaments. For CDM, several subhaloes are predicted to be visible, whereas for WDM and ψDM, early merging is rare. Our findings show how the shapes and sizes of early galaxies are sensitive to the smoothness of the underlying filament network, which provides a new constraint on the nature of dark matter.

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Fig. 1: Number of galaxies resulting from the 10 Mpc/h box simulation.
Fig. 2: Illustrative comparison of high-z galaxies detected by JWST and simulated galaxies.
Fig. 3: 2D and 3D stellar morphologies of simulated galaxies compared with observations for 3 < z < 8.
Fig. 4: 2D and 3D stellar morphologies of simulated galaxies at 2 < z < 3.
Fig. 5: Projected semi-axis ratio b/a versus projected semimajor axis shown for the stellar distribution of each galaxy.
Fig. 6: Redshift dependence of the projected axis ratio b/a.

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Data availability

The simulation data used in this work amount to nearly 4 TB in total, with each snapshot divided into several large files (~32 GB per snapshot). Owing to their size, storage limitations and collaboration agreements among the participating institutions, these data cannot be publicly shared. Access to the simulation outputs may be granted upon request, subject to data-sharing agreements that ensure appropriate use and to approval by all team members and institutions. A complete set of simulated galaxies and 3D animations illustrating the evolution of these simulations can also be provided upon request from the corresponding author.

Code availability

We used the MVEE implementation by Gabriel-p, which is available via GitHub at https://gist.github.com/Gabriel-p/4ddd31422a88e7cdf953. For visualization, ellipses are plotted using the matplotlib.patches.Ellipse class, documented at https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.patches.Ellipse.html.

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Acknowledgements

A.P., G.F.S. and T.B. are grateful to the DIPC for generous support. A.P. thanks the Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian for warm hospitality. R.E. acknowledges support from grants 21-atp21-0077, NSF AST-1816420 and HST-GO-16173.001-A as well as from the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics. We are grateful to the supercomputer facility at Harvard University where most of the simulation work was done. R.W. acknowledges support from NASA JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist grants NAG5-12460, NNX14AN10G and 80NSSC18K0200 from GSFC. This work has been supported by the Spanish project PID2020-114035GB-100 (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE). H.N.L., G.F.S. and T.B. are supported by the Collaborative Research Fund (grant C6017-20G), which is issued by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong S.A.R. Finally, we are grateful to L. Oldham for her thoughtful guidance and assistance in improving this work during the review process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DIPC, Basque Country UPV/EHU, San Sebastian, Spain

    Alvaro Pozo, Tom Broadhurst, Hoang Nhan Luu & George F. Smoot

  2. University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Department of Theoretical Physics, Bilbao, Spain

    Tom Broadhurst

  3. Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain

    Tom Broadhurst

  4. Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Razieh Emami & Lars Hernquist

  5. Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Philip Mocz

  6. Dept. of Physics, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics & Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Mark Vogelsberger

  7. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Christopher J. Conselice

  8. Department of Physics and Institute for Advanced Study, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

    George F. Smoot

  9. Paris Centre for Cosmological Physics, APC, AstroParticule et Cosmologie, Université de Paris, Paris, France

    George F. Smoot

  10. Physics Department, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    George F. Smoot

  11. School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Rogier Windhorst

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Contributions

A.P. and T.B. designed and coordinated the work, prepared the figures and drafted the paper. A.P. and H.N.L. carried out all the simulations, with support from R.E., P.M. and M.V. G.F.S., L.H., C.J.C. and R.W. contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the data and results and to the final paper.

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Correspondence to Alvaro Pozo.

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Pozo, A., Broadhurst, T., Emami, R. et al. A smooth filament origin for distant prolate galaxies seen by JWST and HST. Nat Astron (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02721-5

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