Can early dark energy be probed by the high-redshift galaxy abundance?

The analysis of the cosmic microwave background data acquired by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the large-scale (1300) Planck Telescope show a preference for the early dark energy (EDE) theory, which was set to alleviate the Hubble tension of the Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model by decreasing the sound horizon rₛ, and gives H₀ ≈ 72 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹. However, the EDE model is commonly questioned for exacerbating the σ ₈ tension on top of the ΛCDM model, and its lack of preference from the late-time matter power spectrum observations, e.g. Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. In light of the current obscurities, we inspect if the high redshift galaxy abundance, i.e. stellar mass function/density and luminosity function, can independently probe the EDE model. Our result shows that, compared to ΛCDM, the EDE model prediction at z> 10 displays better consistency with the unexpectedly high results observed by the JWST. At lower redshift, the EDE model only fits the most luminous/massive end, with the majority of the data presenting better consistency with ΛCDM, implying that adding an extra luminosity/mass-sensitive suppression mechanism of the galaxy formation is required for EDE to explain all data around z~ 7-10.