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Abstract

The formation of the first galaxies in the Universe is the new frontier of both galaxy formation and reionization studies. This creates a fierce new challenge, i.e. to simultaneously understand in a unique and coherent picture the processes of galaxy formation and reionization, and – crucially – their connection. To this end, we present the thesan suite of cosmological radiation-magneto-hydrodynamical simulations. They are unique since they: (i) cover a very broad range of spatial and temporal scales; (ii) include an unprecedentedly-broad range of physical processes for simulations of such scales and resolution; (iii) exploit knowledge accumulated at low redshift to minimize the number of free parameters in the physical model; (iv) use a variance-suppression technique in the production of initial conditions to increase their statistical fidelity. Finally, the thesan suite includes multiple runs of the same initial conditions, exploring current unknowns in the physics of dark matter and ionizing sources.