2025/02/27 by Rahul Kannan, Kannan, Rahul, Ewald Puchwein +25 · 1 voice · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.20437
We introduce the THESAN-ZOOM project, a comprehensive suite of high-resolution zoom-in simulations of 14 high-redshift (z>3) galaxies selected from the THESAN simulation volume. This sample encompasses a diverse range of halo masses, with Mhalo ≈ 108 - 1013~M_\odot at z=3. At the highest-resolution, the simulations achieve a baryonic mass of 142~M_\odot and a gravitational softening length of 17~cpc. We employ a state-of-the-art multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM) model that self-consistently includes stellar feedback, radiation fields, dust physics, and low-temperature cooling through a non-equilibrium thermochemical network. Our unique framework incorporates the impact of patchy reionization by adopting the large-scale radiation field topology from the parent THESAN simulation box rather than assuming a spatially uniform UV background. In total, THESAN-ZOOM comprises 60 simulations, including both fiducial runs and complementary variations designed to investigate the impact of numerical and physical parameters on galaxy properties. The fiducial simulation set reproduces a wealth of high-redshift observational data such as the stellar-to-halo-mass relation, the star-forming main sequence, the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation, and the mass-metallicity relation. While our simulations slightly overestimate the abundance of low-mass and low-luminosity galaxies they agree well with observed stellar and UV luminosity functions at the higher mass end. Moreover, the star-formation rate density closely matches the observational estimates from z=3-14. These results indicate that the simulations effectively reproduce many of the essential characteristics of high-redshift galaxies, providing a realistic framework to interpret the exciting new observations from JWST.