Negative cosmological constant in the dark energy sector: tests from JWST photometric and spectroscopic observations of high-redshift galaxies

Abstract Early observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed the existence of an unexpectedly large abundance of extremely massive galaxies at redshifts z ≳ 5: these are in tension with the predictions not only of the standard ΛCDM cosmology, but also with those of a wide class of dynamical dark energy (DE) models, and are generally in better agreement with models characterized by a phantom behaviour. Here we consider a model, inspired by string theory and the ubiquity of anti-de Sitter vacua therein, featuring an evolving DE component with positive energy density on top of a negative cosmological constant, argued in an earlier exploratory analysis to potentially be able to explain the JWST observations. We perform a robust comparison of this model against JWST data, considering both photometric observations from the CEERS program, and spectroscopic observations from the FRESCO survey. We show that the model is able to accommodate the JWST observations, with a consistency probability of up to 98%, even in the presence of an evolving component with a quintessence-like behaviour (easier to accommodate theoretically compared to phantom DE), while remaining consistent with standard low-redshift probes. Our results showcase the potential of measurements of high-redshift galaxy abundances in tests of fundamental physics, and their complementarity with standard cosmological probes.