The THESAN-ZOOM project is a suite of zoom-in cosmological radiation-hydrodynamic simulations exploring galaxy evolution during the first two billion years of the Universe. It builds on the THESAN project, named after the Etruscan goddess of dawn, symbolic of the cosmic dawn when hydrogen was reionized by the first stars and galaxies. THESAN-ZOOM is designed to link intergalactic, circumgalactic, and interstellar scales at much higher resolution than typically possible in large-volume simulations. A key innovation is a novel radiation-injection scheme that preserves the realistic reionization history predicted by the parent simulation, ensuring unprecedented accuracy in modeling external radiation fields and their influence on galaxies. This is complemented by updated models for stellar feedback and multi-phase interstellar medium physics within the state-of-the-art Arepo moving-mesh hydrodynamics code. The suite consists of 14 target galaxies selected to cover a broad mass range, alongside thousands of lower-mass galaxies captured serendipitously within the zoom-in regions. Additionally, a subset of runs explores variations in the underlying physics to systematically investigate the mechanisms driving early galaxy formation.
Recent News
- March 2025
- The first set of papers are submitted.
- August 2024
- All THESAN-ZOOM simulations completed on SuperMUC-NG.
THESAN-ZOOM is designed to be a theoretical counterpart to the many observational efforts aimed at unveiling the properties of high-redshift galaxies, spearheaded by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The primary science goals of THESAN-ZOOM include:
The THESAN-ZOOM project was envisioned in 2021 and the simulations were completed in 2024. The project description page contains an introduction to the motivations, techniques, and early science results. The people page introduces the collaboration, the movies and images pages provide general access to multimedia content, and the publications page lists scientific papers based on THESAN-ZOOM. Finally, the data page provides detailed information and (in the future) public access to the full simulation data.